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}[ATURE, 



AND 



ADDRESSES AJs^D LECTURES 



MISCELLANIES; 



EMBBACINQ 



NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES. 



BY 



R. W. EMERSON 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION, 



BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

LAIS TICKNOB ft FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, fe CO. 

1877. 






Copyright, 1855 and 1876. 
By Phillips, Sampson, & Co. and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



N^TUKE 



THE AMERICiVN SCHOLAR. An Oration before 
THE Phi Beta Kapfa Society, at Cambridge, 
August 31, 1837 75 

AN ADDRESS to the Senior Class in Divinity 
College, Cambridge, July 15, 1838, . • 113 

LITERARY ETHICS. An Address to the Literary 
Societies in Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 . 147 

THE METHOD OF NATURE. An Address to the 
Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville Col- 
lege, Maine, August 11, 1841 . . • .181 

MAN THE REFORMER. A Lecture read before 
THE Mechanics* Apprentices* Library Associa- 
tion, Boston, January 25, 1841 • . • .217 

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON THE TIMES. Read 
IN THE Masonic Temple, Boston, Dec. 2, 1841 . 249 



VI CONTENTS. 

THE CONSEKYATIVE. A Lectueb read in the 
Masonic Temple, Boston, December 9, 1841 . 283 

THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. A Lecture read in 
THE Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842. .317 

THE YOUNG AMERICAN. A Lecture read to 
the Mercantile Library Association, in Boston, 
February 7» 1844 # 349 



NATURE. 



A snbtle chain of countless rinojs 
The next unto the farthest brings ; 
The eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the rose ^ 
And, striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form 



INTRODUCTION. 



Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepul« 
chres of the fathers. It writes biographies, his- 
tories, and criticism. The foregoing generations 
beheld God and nature face to face ; we, tlirough 
their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an 
original relation to the universe ? Why should 
not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight 
and not of tradition, and a religion by revela- 
tion to us, and not the history of theirs? Em- 
bosomed for a season in nature, whose floods 
of life stream around and through us, and invite 
us by the powers they supply, to action propor- 
tioned to nature, why should we grope among 
the dry bones of the past, or put the living gen- 
eration into masquerade out of its faded ward- 
robe ? The sun shines to-day also. There is 
more wool and flax in the fields. There are 
new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us 
demand our own works and laws and worship. 
1 



INTRODUCTION. 



^ Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask 
which are unanswerable. We must trust the 
perfection of the creation so far, as to believe 
that whatever curiosity the order of things has 
awakened in our minds, the order of things can 
satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in 
hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. 
He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as 
truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its 
forms and tendencies, describing its own design. 
Let us interrogate the great apparition, that 
shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquke, 
to what end is nature ? 

All science has one aim, namely, to find a 
theory of natm-e. We have theories of races 
and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote ap- 
proach to an idea of creation. We are now so 
far from the road to truth, that religious teachers 
dispute and hate each other, and speculative men 
are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a 
sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the 
most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, 
It will be its own evidence. Its test is, that 
It will explain aU phenomena. Now many are 
thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; 
as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. 
Philosophically considered, the universe is 
composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

speaking, therefore, all that is separate from uS;, 
all which Philosophy distinguishes as the not 
ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men 
and my own body, must be ranked under this 
name, Nature. In enumerating the values of 
nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the 
word in both senses ; — in its common and in its 
philosophical import. In inquiries so general as 
our present one, the inaccuracy is not material ; 
no confusion of thought will occur. Nature^ in 
the common sense, refers to essences unchanged 
by man ; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art 
is applied to the mixture of his will with the 
same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a 
picture. But his operations taken together are 
so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patch- 
ing, and washing, that in an impression so gi'and 
as that of the w^orld on the human mind, they 
do not vary the result. 



NATURE 



CHAPTER L 

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire aa 
much from his chamber as from society. I am 
not solitary whilst I read and WTite, though no- 
body is with me. But if a man would be alone, 
let him look at the stars. The rays that come 
from those heavenly worlds, will separate between 
him and what he touches. One might think the 
atmosphere was made transparent with this de- 
sign, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the 
perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the 
streets of cities, how great they are! If the 
stars should appear one night in a thousand 
years, how would men believe and adore ; and 
preserve for many generations the remembrance 
of the city of God which had been shown ! Bui 



6 NATURE. 

every night come out these envoys of beauty, and 
light the universe with their admonishing smile. 

The stars awaken a certain, reverence, because 
though always present, they are inaccessible; 
but all natural objects make a kindred impression, 
when the mind is open to their influence. Na- 
ture never wears a mean appearance. Neither 
does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose 
his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Na- 
ture never became a toy to a wise spirit. The 
flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected 
the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they 
had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. 

When we speak of nature in this manner, we 
have a distinct but most poetical sense in the 
mind. "We mean the integrity of impression 
made by manifold natural objects. It is this 
which distinguishes the stick of timber of the 
wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The 
charming landscape which I saw this morning, is 
indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty 
farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and 
Manning the woodland beyond. But none of 
them owns the landscape. There is a property 
in the horizon which no man has but he whose 
eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. 
This is the best part of these men's farms, yet 
\o this their warranty-deeds give no title. 



NATUBE. I 

To speak truly, few adult persons can see 
nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At 
least they have a very superficial seeing. The 
sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but 
shines into the eye and the heart of the child. 
The lover of nature is he whose inward and out- 
ward sejises are still truly adjusted to each other ; 
who has retained the spirit of infancy even into 
the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven 
and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In 
the presence of nature, a wild delight runs 
through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Na- 
ture says, — he is my creature, and maugre all 
his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. 
Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour 
and season yields its tribute of delight ; for every 
hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a 
different state of the mind, from breathless noon 
to gi'immest midnight. Nature is a setting that 
fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. 
In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible 
virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow pud- 
dles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without 
having in my thoughts any occurrence of special 
good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilara- 
tion. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the 
woods too, a man casts oft' his years, as the 
snake his slough, and at what period soever of 



8 NATFRE. 

life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpet- 
ual youth. Within these plantations of God, a 
decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival 
is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should 
tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, 
we return to reason and faith. There I feel that 
nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no 
calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature 
cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — 
my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted 
into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. 
I become a transparent eye-ball ; I am nothing ; 
I see all ; the currents of the Universal Being 
circulate through me ; I am part or parcel of 
God. The name of the nearest friend sounds 
then foreign and accidental : to be brothers, to 
be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a 
trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of un- 
contained and immortal beauty. In the wilder- 
ness, I find something more dear and connate 
than in streets or villages. In the tranquil land- 
scape, and especially in the distant line of the 
horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as 
his own nature. 

The greatest delight which the fields and woods 
minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation 
between man and the vegetable. I am not alone 
and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I 



I 



NATUEE. 9 

to them. The waving of the boughs in the 
storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by- 
surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is 
like that of a higher thought or a better emotion 
coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking 
justly or doing right. 

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this 
delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or 
in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use 
these pleasures with great temperance. For, 
nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, 
but the same scene which yesterday breathed 
perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the 
nymphs, is overspread with melancholy to-day. 
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. 
To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of 
his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is 
a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him 
who has just lost by dea^h a dear friend. Tho 
sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth 
in the population. 



CHAPTER II. 

COMMODITY. 

Whoever considers the final cause of the 
world, will discern a multitude of uses that enter 
as parts into that result. They all admit of 
being thrown into one of the following classes : 
Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline. 

Under the general name of commodity, I rank 
all those advantages w^hich our senses owe to 
nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is 
temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its 
service to the sonl. Yet although low, it is per- 
fect in its kind, and is the only use of nature 
which all men apprelJra. The misery of man 
appears like childish petulance, when we explore " 
the steady and prodigal provision that has been 
made for his support and delight on this green 
ball which floats him through the heavens. 
What angels invented these splendid ornaments, 
these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, 
this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of 
earth between ? this zodiac of lights, this tent 
of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, 



COMMODITY, 11 

this fourfold year ? Beasts, fire, water, stones, 
and corn serve him. The field is at once his 
floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden^ 
and his bed. 

" More servants wait on man 
Than lie '11 take notice of." 



Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the 
material, but is also the process and the result. 
All the parts incessantly work into each other's 
hands for the profit of man. The wind sows 
the seed ; the sun evaporates the* sea; the wind 
blows the vapor to the field ; the ice, on the 
other side of the planet, condenses rain on this ; 
the rain feeds the plant ; the plant feeds the ani- 
mal ; and thus the endless circulations of the 
divine charity nourish man. 

The useful arts are rep roductions or new com- 
binations by the wit^^^an, of the same natu- 
ral benefactors. He n^^fcger waits for favoring 
gales, but by means off^eam, he realizes the 
fable of bolus's bag, arSjcarries the two and 
thirty winds in the boiler of his boat. To di- 
minish friction, he paves the ro^d vv^ith iron bars, 
and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, 
animals, and merchandise behind him, he darts 
through the country, fi'om town to to\Vn, like an 
eagle or a swallow through the air. By the 



12 COMMODITY. 

aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the 
world changed, from the era of Noah to that ot 
Napoleon ! The private poor man hath cities, 
ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to 
the post-office, and the human race run on his 
errands; to the book-shop, and the human race 
read and write of all that happens, for him ; to 
{he court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. 
He sets his house upon the road, and the human 
race go forth every morning, and shovel out the 
snow, and cut a path for him. 

But there is no need of specifying particulars 
in this class of uses. The catalogue is endless, 
and the examples so obvious, that I shall leave 
them to the reader's reflection, with the general 
remark, that this mercenary benefit is one which 
has respect to a farther good. A man is fed, not 
that he may be fed, but that he may work. 




CHAPTER III. 

BEAUTY. 

A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, 
namely, the love of Beauty. 

The ancient Greeks called the world Koafcoc, 
beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, 
or such the plastic power of the human eye, 
that the primary forms, as the sky, the moun- 
tain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in 
and for themselves ; a pleasure arising from out- 
line, color, motion, and grouping. This seems 
partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the 
best of artists. By the mutual action of its 
structure and of the laws of light, perspective 
is produced, which integrates every mass of 
objects, of what character soever, into ^a well 
colored and shaded globe, so that where the 
particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the 
iandscape which they compose, is round and 
symmetrical. And as the eye is the best com- 
poser, so light is the first of painters. There 
is no object so foul that intense light will not 
make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to 
2 



14 



BEAUTY. 



the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, 
like space and time, make all matter gay. Even 
the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this 
general grace diffused over nature, almost all the 
individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is 
proved by our endless imitations of some. of 
them, as the acorn, the grape, tjie pine-cone, the 
^wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most 
bh*ds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, 
sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the 
forms of many trees, as the palm. 

Tor better consideration, we may distribute 
the aspects of Beauty in a threefold manner. 

1. First, the simple perception of natural forms 
is a delight. The influence of the forms and 
actions in nature, is so needful to man, that, in 
its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the con- 
fines of commodity and beauty. To the body 
and mind which have been cramped by noxious 
work or company, nature is medicinal and re- 
stores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney 
comes out of the din and craft of the street, and 
sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. 
In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The 
health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. 
We are never tired, so long as we can see fax 
enough. 

But in other hours, Nature satisfies by its 



* - BEAUTY. 15 

;ove}inA.\LvS, and without any mixture of corporeal 
ben\^fit, I see the spectacle of morning from the 
hill-rop over against my house, from day-break- 
to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might 
share. Tho long slender bars of cloud float like 
fishes in tho sea of crimson light. From the 
earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. 
I seem to partake its rapid transformations : the 
active enchantn^ent reaches my dast, and I di- 
late and conspire with the morning wind. How 
does Nature deify us with a few and cheap 
elements ! Give me health and a day, and I 
will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. 
The dawn is my Assyria ; the sun-set and moon- 
rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of 
faerie ; broad noon shall be my England of the 
senses and the understanding ; the night shall be 
my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. 
Not less excellent, except for our less suscep- 
tibility in the afternoon, was the charm, last 
evening, of a January sunset. The western 
clouds divided and subdivided themselves into 
pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable 
softness ; and the air had so much life and sweet- 
ness, that it was a pain to come within doors. 
"What was it that nature would say ? Was there 
no meaning in the live repose of the valley be- 
hind the mill; and which Homer or Shakspeare 



IS 



BEAUTY. 



could not re-form for me in words ? The leaf, 
less trees become spires of flame in the sunset 
with the blue east for their back-ground, and th< 
stars of the dead calices of flowers, and ever) 
withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, con- 
tribute something to the mute music. 

The inhabitants of cities suppose that the 
country landscape is pleasant only half the year. 
I please myself with the graces of the v/intej 
scenery, and believe that we are as much touched 
by it as by the genial influences of summer 
^ To the attentive eye, each moment of the yeai 
has its own beauty, and in the same field, it 
beholds, every hour, a picture which was never 
seen before, and which shall never be seen again 
The heavens change every moment, and reflect 
their glory or gloom on the plains beneath. The 
state of the crop in the surrounding farms altera 
the expression of the earth from week to week. 
The succession of native plants in the pastures 
and roadsides, which makes the silent clock by 
which time tells the summer hours, will make 
even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen 
observer. The tribes of birds and insects, like 
the plants punctual to their time, follow each 
other, and the year has room for aU. By water- 
courses, the variety is greater. In July, the him 
pontederia or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds 



BEAUTY. 17 

in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and 
swarms with yellow butterflies in continual mo- 
tion. Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and 
gold. Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and 
boasts each month a new ornament. 

But this beauty of Nature which is seen and 
felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of 
day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountahis, 
orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows 
in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, 
become shows merely, and mock us with their 
unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, 
and 't is mere tinsel ; it will not please as when 
its light shines upon your necessary journey. 
The beauty that shflimers in the yellow after- 
noons of October, who ever could clutch it? Go 
forth to find it, and it is gone ; 't is only a mirage 
as you look from the windows of diligence. 

2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the 
spiritual elejnent is essential to its perfection. 
The high and divine beauty which can be loved 
without effeminacy, is that which is found in 
combination with the human will. Beauty is 
the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural 
action is graceful. Every heroic act is also 
decent, and causes the place and the bystanders 
to shine. We are taught by great actions that 
the universe is the property of every individual 
2* 



18 BEAUTY. 

in it. Every rational creature has all nature for 
his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He 
may divest himself of it ; he may creep into a 
corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men 
do, but he is entitled to the world by his con- 
stitution. In proportion to the energy of his 
thought and will, he takes up the world into 
himself. " All those things for which men 
plough, build, or sail, obey virtue ; " said Sallust. 
" The winds and waves," said Gibbon, " are 
always on the side of the ablest navigators." 
So are the sun and moon and all the stars of 
heaven. When a noble act is done, — perchance 
in a scene of great natural beauty ; when Leon- 
idas and his three hundred martyrs consume one 
day in dying, and the sun and moon come each 
and look at them once in the steep defile of 
Thermopylae ; when Arnold Winkelried, in the 
high Alps, under the -shadow of the avalanche, 
gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to 
break the line for his comrades ; are not these 
heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to 
the. beauty of the deed ? When the bark of 
Columbus nears the shore of America; — before 
it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of 
all their huts of cane ; the sea behind ; and the 
purple mountains of the Indian Archipelago 
around, can we separate the man from the liTiiig 



BEAUTY. 19 

picture? Does not the New World clothe his 
form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit 
drapery ? Ever does natural beauty steal in like 
air, and envelope great actions. When Sir Plarry 
Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on 
a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the 
English laws, one of the multitude cried out to 
liim, " You never sate on so glorious a seat." 
Charles IL, to intimidate the citizens of London, 
caused the patriot Lord Russel to be drawn in an 
open coach, through the principal streets of the 
city, on his way to the scaffold. " But," his 
biographer says, " the multitude imagined they 
saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." In 
private places, among sordid objects, an act of 
truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself 
the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. 
Natm-e stretches out her arms to embrace man, 
only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. 
Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose 
and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur 
and grace to the decoration of her darling child. 
Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the 
frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is 
in unison v/ith her works, and makes the central 
figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, 
Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly in 
our memory with the geography and climate of 



20 BEAUTY. 

Greece. The visible heavens and earth synipa 
thize with Jesus. And in common life, whoso 
ever has seen a person of powerful character and 
happy genius, will have remarked how easily he 
took all things along with him, — the persons 
the opinions; and the day, and nature became 
ancillary to a man. 

3. There is still another aspect under whicl 
the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely 
as it becomes an object of the intellect. Besidf 
the relation of things to virtue, they have a re 
lation to thought. The intellect searches ou 
the absolute order of things as they stand in tht 
mind of God, and without the colors of affec 
tion. The intellectual and the active powen 
seem to succeed each other, and the exelusivt 
activity of the one, generates the exclusive ac 
tivity of the other. There is something un 
friendly in each to the other, but they are lik( 
the alternate periods of feeding and working ii 
animals ; each prepares and will be followed b} 
the other. Therefore does beauty, which, ii. 
relation to actions, as we have seen, come^ 
unsought, and comes because it is unsought 
remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the 
intellect ; and then again, in its turn, of the active 
power. Nothing divine dies. All good is eter 
lially reproductive. The beauty of nature re 



BEAUTY. 21 

forms itself in the mind, and not for barren 
contemplation, but for new creation. 

All men are in some degree impressed by tho 
face of the world; some men even to delight. 
This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the 
same love in such excess, that, not content with 
admking, they seek to embody it in new forms. 
The creation of beauty is Art. 

The production of a work of art throws a 
light upon the mystery of humanity. A work 
of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. 
It is the result or expression of nature, in min- 
iature. For, although the works of nature are 
innumerable and all different, the result or the 
expression of them all is similar and single. 
Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even 
unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the 
ocean, make an analogous impression on the 
mind. What is common to them all, —that 
perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The stand- 
ard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural 
forms, — the totality of nature ; which the Ital- 
ians expressed by defining beauty " il piu nelP 
uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone : nothing 
but is beautiful in the whole. A single object 
is only so far beautiful as it suggests this uni- 
versal gTace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, 
the musician, the architect, seek each to concen* 



22 BEAUTY. 

trate this radiance of the world on one point, 
and each in his several work to satisfy the love 
of beauty which stimulates him to produce. 
Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic 
of man. Thus in art, does nature work through 
the will of a man filled with the beauty of her 
first works. 

The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy 
the deske of beauty. This element I call an 
ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given 
why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its larg- 
est and profoundest sense, is one expression for 
the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and 
goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of 
the same All. But beauty in nature is not ulti- 
mate. It is the herald of inward and eternal 
beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory 
good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet 
the last or highest expression of the final cause 
of Nature. 



CHAPTER IV. 

LANGUAGE. 

Language is a third use which Nature sub- 
serves to man. Nature is the vehicle of thought, 
and in a simple, double, and threefold degree. 

1. "Words are signs of natural facts. 

2. Particular natural facts are symbols of par- 
ticular spiritual facts. 

3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. 

1. Words are signs of natural facts. The 
use of natural history is to give us aid in super- 
natural history : the use of the outer creation, 
to give us language for the beings and changes of 
the inward creation. Every word which is used 
to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced 
to its root, is found to be borrowed from some 
material appearance. Right means straight; 
wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means 
wind; transgression^ the crossing of 3,^line; 
supercilious^ the raising of the eyebrow. We 
say the heart to express emotion, the head to 
denote thought ; and thought and emotion are 
words borrowed from sensible things, and now 



24 LANGUAGE. 

appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the 
process by which this transformation is made, 
is hidden from us in the remote time when 
language was framed ; but the same tendency- 
may be daily observed in children. Children 
and savages use only nouns or names of things, 
which they convert into verbs, and apply to 
analogous mentai acts. 

2. But this origin of all words that convey a 
spiritual import, — so conspicuous a fact in the 
history of language, — is our least debt to nature. 
It is not words only that are emblematic ; it is 
things which are emblematic. Every natural 
fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every 
appearance in nature corresponds to some state 
of the mind, and that state of the mind can 
only be described by presenting that natural 
appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a 
lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a 
rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is inno- 
cence ; a snake is subtle spite ; flowers express 
to us the delicate affections. Light and dark- 
ness are our familiar expression for knowledge 
and ignorance ; and heat for love. Visible dis- 
tance behind and before us, is respectively our 
image of memory and hope. ' 

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, 
and is not reminded of the flux of all things? 



LANGUAGE. 25 

f 

Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles 
that propagate themselves are the beautiful type 
of all influence. Man is conscious of a univer- 
sal soul within or behind his individual life, 
wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of 
Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. 
This universal soul, he calls Reason : it is not 
mine, or thine, or his, but we are its ; we are its 
property and men. And the blue sky in w^hich 
the private earth is buried, the sky with its 
eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the 
type of Reason. That which, intellectually 
considered, we call Reason, considered in rela- 
tion to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the 
Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in 
all ages and countries, embodies it in his lan- 
( guage, as the Father. 

It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or 
capricious in these analogies, but that they are 
constant, and pervade nature. These are not 
the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but 
man is an analogist, and studies relations in all 
objects. He is placed in the centre of beings, 
and a ray of relation passes from every other 
being to him. And neither can man be under- 
stood wHhout these objects, nor these objects 
without man. All the facts in natural history 
taken by themselves, have no value, but are 
3 



2^* LANGUAGE. 



barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human 
history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all 
Linnaeus' and BuflFon's volumes, are dry cata- 
logues of facts ; but the most trivial of these 
facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, 
or noise of an insect, applied to the iUustration 
of a fact m intellectual philosophy, or, in any 
'yay associated to human nature, affects us in 
the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed 
of a plant, — to what affecting analogies in the 
nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in 
aU discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who caUs 
the human corpse a seed, — « It is sown a natural 
Dody ; at is raised a spiritual body." The motion 
of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, 
makes the day, and the year. These are cer- 
tain amounts of brute light and heat. But is 
there no intent of an analogy between man's life 
and the seasons ? And do the seasons gain no 
grandeur or pathos from that analogy' The 
mstincts of the ant are very unimportant, con- 
sidered as the ant's; but the moment a ray of 
relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the 
httle drudge is seen to be a monitor, a Httle body 
with a mighty heart, then aU its habits, even 
that said to be recently observed, that it never 
Bleeps, become sublime. 

Because of this radical correspondence between 



LANGUAGE. 21 

visible tilings and human thoughts, savages, who 
have only what is necessary, converse in figures. 
As we go back in history, language becomes 
more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is 
all poetry ; or all spiritual facts are represented 
by natural symbols. The same symbols are 
found to make the original elements of all lan- 
guages. It has moreover been observed, that the 
idioms of all languages approach each other in 
passages of the greatest eloquence and power. 
And as this is the first language, so is it the last. 
This immediate dependence of language upon 
nature, this conversion of an outward phenom- 
enon into a type of somewhat in human life, 
never loses its power to affect us. It is this 
which gives that piquancy to the conversation 
of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, 
which all men relish. 

A man's power to connect his thought with 
its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on 
the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his 
love of truth, and his desire to communicate it 
without loss. The corruption of man is followed 
by the corruption of language. When simplicity 
of character and the sovereignty of ideas is 
broken up by the prevalence of secondary 
desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of 
power, and of praise, — and duplicity and false- 



28 LANGUAGE. 

hood take place of simplicity and truth, the 
power over nature as an interpreter of the will 
is in a degree lost ; new imagery ceases to be 
created, and old w^ords are perverted to stand 
for things which are not ; a paper currency is 
employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. 
In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words 
lose all power to stimulate the understanding or 
the affections. Hundreds of writers may be 
found in every long-civilized nation, who for a 
short tiipe believe, and make others believe, that 
they see and utter truths, who do not of them- 
selves clothe one thought in its natural garment, 
but who feed unconsciously on the language 
created by the primary writers of the country, 
those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. 

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and 
fasten words again to visible things ; so thai 
picturesque language is at once a commanding 
certificate that he who employs it, is a man in 
alliance with truth and God. The moment oui 
discourse rises above the ground line of familial 
facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by 
thought, it clothes itself in images. A man con 
versing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual 
processes, will find that a material image, more 
or less luminous, arises in his mind, contempora- 
neous with every thought, which furnishes the 



LANGUAGE. 29 

vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing 
and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. 
This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending 
of experience with the present action of the 
mind. It is proper creation. It is the working 
of the Original Cause through the instruments 
he has already made. 

These facts may suggest the advantage which 
the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, 
over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. "We 
know more from nature than we can at will com- 
municate. Its light flows into the mind ever- 
more, and we forget its presence. The poet, the 
orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have 
been nourished by their fair and appeasing 
changes, year after year, without design and 
without heed, — shall not lose their lesson al- 
together, in the roar of cities or the broil of 
politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation and 
terror in national councils, — in the hour of rev- 
olution, — these solemn images shall reappear in 
their morning lustre, as fit symbols and words of 
the thoughts which the passing events shall 
awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again 
the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river 
rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the 
mountains, as he saw and heard them in hia 
infancy. And with these forms, the spells of 
3* 



30 LANGUAGE. 

persuasion, the keys of power are put into his 
hands. 

3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in 
the expression of particular meanings. But how 
great a language to convey such pepper-corn 
informations ! Did it need such noble races of 
creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of 
orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the diction- 
ary and grammar of his municipal speech ? 
"Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the 
affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we 
have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. 
We are like travellers using the cinders of a 
volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that 
it always stands ready to clothe what we would 
say, we "cannot avoid the question, whether the 
characters are not significant of themselves. Have 
mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance 
but what we consciously give them, when we 
employ them as emblems of our thoughts ? The 
world is emblematic. Parts of speech are met 
aphors, because the whole of nature is a meta 
phor of the human mind. The laws of moral 
nature answer to those of matter as face to face 
in a glass. " The visible world and the relation 
of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." 
The axioms of physics translate the laws of 
ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than ita 



LANGUAGE. 3l 

part ; " " reaction is equal to action ; " " the 
smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, 
the difference of weight being compensated by 
time ; " and many the like propositions, which 
have an ethical as well as physical sense. These 
propositions have a much more extensive and 
universal sense when applied to human life, than 
when confined to technical use. 

In like manner, the memorable words of his- 
tory, and the proverbs of nations, consist usually 
of a natural fact, selected as a picture or parable 
of a moral truth. Thus ; A rolling stone gathers 
no moss ; A bird in the hand is worth two in the 
bush ; A cripple in the right way, will beat a 
racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun 
shines; 'T is hard to carry a full cup even; 
Vinegar is the son of wine ; The last ounce 
broke the camel's back; Long-lived trees make 
roots first ; — and the like. In their primary 
sense these are trivial facts, but we repeat them 
for the value of their analogical import. What 
is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, 
and allegories. 

This relation between the mind and matter is 
not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will 
of God, and so is free to be known by all men. 
It appears to men, or it does not appear. When 
in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the 



32 LANGUAGE. 

wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not 
blind and deaf; 

" Can these things be, 
And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
Without our special wonder ? " 

for the aniverse becomes transparent, and the 
light of higher laws than its own, shines through 
it. It is the standing problem which has exer- 
cised the wonder and the study of every fine 
genius since the world began ; from the era of 
the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of 
Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of 
Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the 
road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet 
comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her rid- 
dle. There seems to be a necessity in spirit to 
manifest itself in material forms ; and day and 
night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and 
alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of 
God, and are what they are by virtue of pre- 
ceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact 
is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible 
creation is the terminus or the circumference of 
the invisible world. " Material objects," said a 
French philosopher, " are necessarily kinds of 
sconce of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, 
which must always preserve an exact relation to 



LANGUAGE. 38 

their first origin ; in other words, visible nature 
must have a spiritual and moral side." 

This doctrine is abstruse, and though the 
images of " garment," " scoriae," " mirror," &c., 
may stimulate the fancy, we must summon the 
aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make 
it plain. " Every scripture is to be interpreted 
by the same spirit which gave it forth," — is the 
fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony 
with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will 
purge the eyes to understand her text. By 
degrees we may come to know the primitive 
sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that 
the world shall be to us an open book, and every 
form significant of its hidden life and final cause. 

A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the 
view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful 
extent and multitude of objects ; since " every 
object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the 
soul." That which was unconscious truth, be- 
comes, when interpreted and defined in an object, 
a part of the domain of knowledge, — a new 
weapon in the magazine of power. 



CHAPTER V. 



DISCIPLINE. 



In view of the significance of nature, we 
arrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a 
discipline. This use of the world includes the 
preceding uses, as parts of itself. 

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, loco- 
motion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give 
us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning 
is unlimited. They educate both the Under- 
standing and the Reason. Every property of 
matter is a school for the understanding, — its 
solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its 
figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, 
divides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment 
and room for its activity in this worthy scene. 
Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into 
its own world of thought, by perceiving the 
analogy that marries Matter and Mind. 

1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding 
in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible 
objects is a constant exercise in the necessary 
lessons of diflerence, of likeness, of order, of 



DISCIPLINE. 85 

being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; 
of assent from particular to general ; of combi- 
nation to one end of manifold forces. Propor- 
tioned to the importance of the organ to be 
formed, is the extreme care with which its tui- 
tion is provided, — a care pretermitted in no 
single case. What tedious training, day after 
day, year after year, never ending, to form the 
common sense ; what continual reproduction of 
annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas ; what re- 
joicing over us of little men ; what disputing of 
prices, what reckonings of interest, — and all to 
form the Hand of the mind; — to instruct us 
that " good thoughts are no better than good 
dreams, unless they be executed ! " 

The same good office is performed by Pro- 
perty and its filial systems of debt and credit. 
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, 
the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and 
hate ; — debt, which consumes so much time, 
which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit 
with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor 
whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed 
most by those who suffer from it most. More- 
over, property, which has been well compared to 
snow, — " if it fall level to-day, it will be blown 
into drifts to-morrow," — is the surface action of 
internal machinery, like the index on the face of 



86 DISCIPLINE. 

a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the 
understanding, it is having in the foresight of 
the spirit, experience in profounder laws 

The whole character and fortune of tne indi- 
vidual are affected by the least inequalities in 
the culture of ihe understanding ; for example, 
in the perception of differences. Therefore is 
Space, and therefore Time, that man may 
know that things are not huddled and lumped, 
but sundered and individual. A bell and a 
plough have each their use, and neither can do 
the office of the other. Water is good to drink, 
coal to burn, wool to wear ; but wool cannot be 
drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise 
man shows his wisdom in separation, in grada- 
tion, and his scale of creatures and of merits is 
as wide as natm-e. The foolish have no range 
in their scale, but suppose every man is as every 
other man. What is not good they call the worst, 
and what is not hateful, they call the best. 

In like manner, what good heed nature forms 
in us ! She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is 
yea, and her nay, nay. 

The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, 
Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the 
hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's 
dice are always loaded ; that in her heaps and 
rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. 



DISCIPLINE. • 37 

How calmly and genially the mind apprehends 
one after another the laws of physics! What 
noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters 
into the counsels of the creation, and feels by 
knowledge the privilege to Be ! His insight re- 
fines him. The beauty of nature shines in his 
own breast. Man is greater than he can see this, 
and the universe less, because Time and Space 
relations vanish as laws are known. 

Here again we are impressed and even daunted 
by the immense Universe to be explored. " What 
we know, is a point to what we do not know." 
Open any recent journal of science, and weigh 
the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, 
Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, 
and judge whether the interest of natural sci- 
ence is likely to be soon exhausted. 

Passing by many particulars of the discipline 
of nature, we must not omit to specify two. 

The exercise of the Will or the lesson of 
power is taught in every event. From the 
child's successive possession of his several senses 
up to the hour when he saith, " Thy will be 
done ! " he is learning the secret, that he can 
reduce under his will, not only particular events, 
but great classes, nay the whole series of events, 
and so conform all facts to his character. Nature 
is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It 
^ 4 



S8 DISCIPLINE. 

receives the dominion of man as meekly as the 
ass on which the Saviom* rode. It offers all its 
kingdoms to man as the raw material which he 
may mould into what is useful. Man is never 
weary of working it up. He forges the subtile 
and delicate air into wise and melodious words, 
and gives them wing as angels of persuasion and 
command. One after another, his victorious 
thought comes up with and reduces all things, 
until the world becomes, at last, only a realized 
will, — the double of the man. 

2. Sensible objects conform to the premoni- 
tions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All 
things are moral ; and in their boundless changes 
have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. 
Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, 
and motion, that every globe in the remotest 
heaven ; every chemical change from the rudest 
crystal up to the laws of life ; every change of 
vegetation from the first principle of growth in 
the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and ante- 
diluvian coal-mine ; every animal function from 
the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder 
to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo 
the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature 
ever the ally of Religion : lends all her pomp 
and riches to the religious sentiment. Prophet 
and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn 



DISCIPLINE. 39 

deeply from this source. This ethical character 
so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, a3 
to seem the end for which it was made. What- 
ever private purpose is answered by any membel 
or part, this is its public and universal function, 
and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is ex- 
hausted in its first use. When a thing has served 
an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an 
ulterior service. In God, every end is converted 
into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, 
regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it 
is to the mind an education in the doctrine of 
Use, namely, that a thing is good only so far as 
it serves ; that a conspiring of parts and efforts 
to the production of an end, is essential to any 
being. The first and gross manifestation of this 
truth, is our inevitable and hated training in 
values and wants, in corn and meat. 

It has already been illustrated, that every nat- 
ural process is a version of a moral sentence. 
The moral law lies at the centre of nature and 
radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and 
marrow of every substance, every relation, and 
every process. All things with which we deal, 
preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gos- 
pel? The chaff" and the wheat, weeds and 
plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a sacred 
emblem from the first furrow of spring to the 



40 



DISCIPLINE. 



last stack which the snow of winter overtakes 
in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the 
miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, 
have each an experience precisely parallel, and 
leading to the same conclusion: because all 
organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be 
doubted that this moral sentiment which thus 
scents the air, grows in the grain, and impreg- 
nates the waters of the world, is caught by 
man and sinks into his soul. The moral influ- 
ence of nature upon every individual is that 
amount of truth which it iUustrates to him. 
Who can estimate this ? Who can guess how 
much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught 
the fisherman? how much tranquillity has been 
reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose 
unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive 
flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle 
or stain? how much industry and providence 
and affection we have caught from the panto- 
mime of brutes ? What a searching preacher of 
self-command is the varying phenomenon of 
Health ! 

Herein is especiaUy apprehended the unity of 
Nature, — the unity in variety, — which meets 
us everywhere. AU the endless variety of things 
make an identical impression. Xenophanea 
complained in his old age, that, look where he 



DISCIPLINE. 41 

would, all things hastened back to Unity. He 
was weary of seeing the same entity in the 
tedious variety of forms. The fable of Proteus 
has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a 
moment of time is related to the whole, and 
partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each 
particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders 
the likeness of the world. 

Not only resemblances exist in things whose 
analogy is obvious, as when we detect the type 
of the human hand in the flipper of the fossil 
saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great 
superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is called 
" frozen music," by De Stael and Goethe. Vitru- 
vius thought an architect should be a musician. 
" A Gothic church," said Coleridge, " is a petrified 
religion." Michael Angelo maintained, that, to 
an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essen- 
tial. In Hay den's oratories, the notes present to 
the imagination not only motions, as, of the 
snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors 
also ; as the green grass. The law of harmonic 
sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. The 
granite is differenced in its laws only by the 
more or less of heat, from the river that wears it 
away. The river, as it flows, resembles the 
air that flows over it ; the air resembles th^ 
light which traverses it with more subfile cu?' 
4* 



42 DisciPLiisrE. 

rents ; the light resembles the heat which ridea 
with it through Space. Each creature is only a 
modification of the other ; the likeness in them 
is more than the difference, and their radical law 
is one and the same. A rule of one art, or a law 
of one organization, holds true throughout nature. 
So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, 
it lies under the undermost garment of nature, 
and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For, 
it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth 
which we express in words, implies or supposes 
every other truth. Omne verum vero consonat. 
It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising 
all possible circles; which, however, may be 
drawn, and comprise it, in like manner. Every 
such truth is the absolute Ens seen from one 
side. But it has innumerable sides. 

The central Unity is still more conspicuous in 
actions. Words are finite organs of the infinite 
mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of 
what is in truth. . They break, chop, and im- 
poverish it. An action is the perfection and 
publication of thought. A right action seems to 
fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. 
" The wise man, in doing one thing, does all ; 
or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the 
likeness of all which is done rightly." 

Words and actions are not the attributes of 



DISCIPLINE. 43 

brute nature. They introduce us to the human 
form, of which all other organizations appear to 
be degradations. When this appears among so 
many that surround it, the spirit prefers it to 
all others. It says, ' From such as this, have I 
drawn joy and knowledge ; in such as this, have 
I found and beheld myself ; I will speak to it ; 
it can speak again; it can yield me thought 
already formed and alive.' In fact, the eye,— 
the mind, — is always accompanied by these 
forms, male and female ; and these are incom- 
parably the richest informations of the power 
and order that lie at the heart of things. Unfor- 
tunately, every one of them bears the marks 
as of some injury; is marred and superficially 
defective. Nevertheless, far different from the 
deaf and dumb nature around them, these all 
rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of 
thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all 
organizations, are the entrances. 

It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail 
their ministry to our education, but where would 
it stop ? "We are associated in adolescent and 
adult life with some friends, who, like skies and 
waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, 
answering each to a certain affection of the sou], 
satisfy our desire on that side ; whom we lack 
power to put at such focal distance from us, that 



44 DISCIPLIKE. 

we can mend or even analyze them. "We cannot 
choose but love them. When much intercourse 
with a friend has supplied us with a standard of 
excellence, and has increased our respect for the 
resources of God who thus sends a real person 
to outgo our ideal ; when he has, moreover, 
become an object of thought, and, whilst his 
character retains all its unconscious effect, is 
converted in the mind into solid and sweet wis- 
dom, — it is a sign to us that his office is closing, 
and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight 
in a short time. 



CHAPTER VI. 

IDEALISM. 

Thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and 
practicable meaning of the world conveyed to 
man, the immortal pupil, in every object of sense. 
To this one end of Discipline, all parts of nature 
conspire. 

A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, 
whether this end be not the Final Cause of the 
Universe ; and whether nature outwardly exists. 
It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we 
call the World, that God will teach a human 
mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain 
number of congruent sensations, which we call 
sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade. 
In my utter impotence to test the authenticity 
of the report of my senses, to know whether 
the impressions they make on me correspond 
with outlying objects, what difference does it 
make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or 
some god paints the image in the firmament of 
the soul ? The relations of parts and the end of 
the whole remaining the same, what is the dif* 



46 IDEALISM 

ference, whether land and sea interact, and worida 
revolve and intermingle without number or end, 
— deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balan- 
cing galaxy, throughout absolute space, — or, 
whether, without relations of time and space, 
the same appearances are inscribed in the con- 
stant faith of man ? "Whether nature enjoy a 
substantial existence without, or is only in the 
apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and 
alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is 
ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy 
of my senses. 

The frivolous make themselves merry with the 
Ideal theory, as if its consequences were bur« 
lesque ; as if it affected the stability of nature. 
It surely does not. God never jests with us, and 
will not compromise the end of nature, by per- 
mitting any inconsequence in its procession. Any 
distrust of the permanence of laws, would par- 
alyze the faculties of man. Their permanence 
is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is 
perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all 
set to the hypothesis of the permanence of na- 
ture. We are not buUt like a ship to be tossed 
but like a house to stand. It is a natural conse- 
quence of this structure, that, so long as the 
active powers predominate over the reflective, we 
resist with indignation any hint that nature ia 



IDEALISM. 47 

more short-lived or mutable than spirit. The 
broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the toll- 
man, are much displeased at the intimation. 

But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the per- 
manence of natural laws, the question of the 
absolute existence of nature still remains open. 
It is the uniform effect of culture on the human 
mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of 
particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote ; 
but to lead us to regard nature as phenomenon, 
not a substance ; to attribute necessary existence 
to spirit ; to esteem nature as an accident and an 
effect. 

To the senses and the unrenewed understand- 
ing, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the 
absolute existence of nature. In their view 
man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things 
are ultimates, and they never look beyond their 
sphere. The presence of Reason mars this 
faith. The first effort of thought tends to relax 
this despotism of the senses, which binds us to 
nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us 
nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this 
higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, 
with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and col- 
ored surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens, 
to outline and surface are at once added, grace 
and expression. These proceed from imagina- 



48 IDEALISM. 

lion and affection, and abate somewhat of the 
angular distinctness of objects. If the Reason 
be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines 
and surfaces become transparent, and are no 
longer seen ; causes and spirits are seen through 
them The best moments of life are these deli- 
cious awakenings of the higher powers, and the 
reverential withdrawing of nature before its God. 

Let us proceed to indicate the effects of cul- 
ture. 1. Our first institution in the Ideal phi- 
losophy is a hint from nature herself. 

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to 
emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a 
small alteration in our local position apprizes us 
of a dualism. We are strangely affected by see- 
ing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, 
or through the tints of an unusual sky. The 
last change in our point of view, gives the 
whole world a pictorial air. A man who seldom 
rides, needs only to get into a coach and traverse 
his own town, to turn the street into a puppet- 
show. The men, the women, — talldng, run- 
ning, bartering, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, 
the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are 
unrealized at once, or, at least, wholly detached 
from all relation to the observer, and seen as 
apparent, not substantial beings. What new 
thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of 



IDEALISM. ' 49 

eountiy quite familiar, in the rapid movement of 
the railroad car ! Nay, the most wonted objects, 
(make a very slight change in the point of vis- 
ion,) please us most. In a camera obscura, the 
butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own 
family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known 
face gratifies us. Tarn the eyes upside down, 
by looking at the landscape through your legs, 
and how agreeable is the picture, though you 
have seen it any time these twenty years ! - 

In these cases, by mechanical means, is sug- 
gested the difference between the observer and 
the spectacle, — between man and nature. Hence 
arises a pleasure mixed with awe ; I may say, a 
low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, 
probably, that man is hereby apprized, that, 
whilst the world is a spectacle, something in 
himself is stable. 

2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates 
the same pleasure. By a few strokes he deline- 
ates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, 
the city, the hero, the maiden, not diff'erent from 
what we know them, but only lifted from the 
ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes 
the land and the sea, makes them revolve around 
the axis of his primary thought, and disposes 
them anew. Possessed himself by a heroic 
5 



60 IDEALISM. 

passion, he uses xnatter as symbols of it. The 
sensual man conforms thoughts to things ; the 
poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one 
esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as 
fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, 
the refractory world is ductile and flexible ; he 
invests dust and stones with humanity, and 
makes them the words of the Reason. The 
Imagination may be defined to be, the use 
which the Reason makes of the material world, 
Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinat- 
ing nature for the purposes of expression, beyond 
all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation 
like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it 
to embody any caprice of thought that is up- 
permost in his mind. The remotest spaces of 
nature are visited, and the farthest sundered 
things are brought together, by a subtile spirit- 
ual connection. We are made aware that mag- 
nitude of material things is relative, and all 
objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of 
the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, 
the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be 
the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps 
her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has 
awakened, is her ornament ; 

The ornament of beauty is Suspect, 

A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air. 



IDEALISM. 51 

His passion is not the fruit of chance ; it swf^Us, 

as he speaks, to a city, or a state. 

No, it was bullded far from accident ; 

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls 

Under the brow of thralling discontent ; 

It fears not policy, that heretic, 

That works on leases of short numbered hours, 

But all alone stands hugely politic. 

In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids 
seem to him recent and transitory. The fresh- 
ness of youth and love dazzles him with its re- 
semblance to morning. 

Take those lips away 
Which so sweetly were forsworn ; 
And those eyes, — the break of day, 
Lights that do mislead the morn. 

The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say, 
in passing, it would not be easy to match in 
literature. 

This transfiguration which all material objects 
undergo through the passion of the poet, — this 
power which he exerts to dwarf the great, to 
magnify the small, — might be illustrated by a 
thousand examples from his Plays. I have 
before me the Tempest, and will cite only these 
few lines. 

Ariel. The strong based promontory 

Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up 
The pine and cedar. 



52 IDEALISM. 

Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic 
Aionzo, and his companions ; 

A solemn air, and the best comforter 
To an unsettled fancy, cure tliy brains 
Now useless, boiled within thy skull. 

Again ; 

The charm dissolves apace, 
And, as the morning steals upon the night, 
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle _ 
Their clearer reason. 

Their understanding 
Begins to swell : and the approaching tide 
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores 
That now lie foul and muddy. 

The perception of real affinities between 
events, (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for 
those only are real,) enables the poet thus to 
make free with the most imposing forms and 
phenomena of the world, and to assert the pre- 
dominance of the soul. 

3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with 
his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher 
only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his 
main end ; the other Truth. But the philos- 
opher, not less than the poet, postpones the 
apparent order and relations of things to the 
empire of thought. " The problem of philoso- 
phy," according to Plato, "is, for all that exists 



IDEALISM. 53 

conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and 
absolute." It proceeds on the faith that a law 
determines all phenomena, which being known, 
the phenomena can be predicted. That law, 
when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is 
infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet 
are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, 
which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the 
charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, 
strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles ? 
It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been 
imparted to nature ; that the solid seeming block 
of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a 
thought ; that this feeble human being has 
penetrated the vast masses of nature with an 
informing soul, and recognised itself in their 
harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, 
when this is attained, the memory disburthens 
itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, 
and carries centuries of observation in a single 
formula. 

Thus even in physics, the material is degraded 
before the spiritual. The astronomer, the geom- 
eter, rely on their irrefragable analysis, and dis- 
dain the results of observation. The sublime 
remark of Euler on his law of arches, " This 
will be found contrary to all experience, yet ur 



54 IDEALISM. 

true ; " had already transferred nature into the 
mind, and left matter like an outcast corpse. 

4. Intellectual science has been observed to 
beget invariably a doubt of the existence of 
matter. Turgot said, " He that has never 
doubted the existence of matter, may be assured 
he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." 
It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary 
uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas ; and in 
their presence, we feel that the outward cir- 
cumstance is a dream and a shade. Whilst 
we wait in this Olympus of gods, we think 
of nature as an appendix to the soul. We as- 
cend into their region, and know that these are 
the thoughts of the Supreme Being. " These 
are they who were set up from everlasting, from 
the beginning, or ever the earth was. When he 
prepared the heavens, they were there ; when he 
established the clouds above, when he strength- 
ened the fountains of the deep. Then they 
were by him, as one brought up with him. Of 
them took he counsel." 

Their influence is proportionate. As objects 
of science, they are accessible to few men. Yet 
all men are capable of being raised by piety or 
by passion, into their region. And no man 
touches these divine natures, without becoming, 
in some degree, himself divine. Like a new 



IDEALISM. 65 

soul, they renew the body. We become physi- 
cally nimble and lightsome ; we tread on air ; 
life is no longer irksome, and we think it will 
never be so. No man fears age or misfortune 
or death, in their serene company, for he is 
transported out of the district of change. 
Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice 
and Truth, we learn the difference between the 
absolute and the conditional or relative. We 
apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the 
first time, we exist We become immortal, for 
we learn that time and space are relations of 
matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a 
virtuous will, they have no affinity. 

5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be 
fitly called, — the practice of ideas, or the intro- 
duction of ideas into life, — have an analogous 
effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature 
and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics 
and religion differ herein; that the one is the 
system of human duties commencing from man ; 
the other, from God. Keligion includes the per- 
sonality of God; Ethics does not. They are 
one to our present design. They both put na- 
ture under foot. The first and last lesson of 
religion is, " The things that are seen, are tem- 
poral; the things that are unseen, are eternal." 
It puts an affront upon nature. It does that for 



56 IDEALISM. 

the unschooled, which philosophy does for Berke- 
ley and Viasa. The uniform language that may 
be heard in the churches of the most ignorant 
sects, is, — " Contemn the unsubstantial shows of 
the world ; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, 
unrealities ; seek the realities of religion." The 
devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have 
arrived at a certain hostility and indignation 
towards matter, as. the Manichean and Plotinus. 
They distrusted in themselves any looking back 
to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was 
ashamed of his body. In short, they might all 
say of matter, what Michael Angelo said of ex- 
ternal beauty, " it is the frail and weary weed, 
in w^hich God dresses the soul, which he has 
called into time." 

It appears that motion, poetry, physical and 
intellectual science, and religion, all tend to 
aff*ect our convictions of the reality of the ex- 
ternal world. But I own there is somethinsf 
ungrateful in expanding too curiously the par- 
ticulars of the general proposition, that all culture 
tends to imbue us with idealism. I have no 
hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I 
expand and live in the warm day like corn and 
melons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish 
to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil 
my gentle nest. I only wish to indicate tho 



IDEALISM. 57 

Ime position of nature in regard to man, wherein 
to establish man, all right education tends ; as 
the ground which to attain is the object of hu- 
man life, that is, of man's connection with nature 
Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and 
brings the mind to call that apparent, which i\ 
uses to call real, and that real, which it uses to 
call visionary. Children, it is true, believe in 
the external world. The belief that it appears 
only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this 
faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the 
first. 

The advantage of the ideal theory over the 
popular faith, is this, that it presents the world 
in precisely that view which is most desirable to 
the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, 
both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy 
and virtue, take. For, seen in the light of 
thought, the world always is phenomenal ; and 
virtue subordinates it to the mind. Idealism 
sees the world in God. It beholds the whole 
circle of persons and things, of actions and 
events, of country and religion, not as painfully 
accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in 
an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, 
which God paints on the instant eternity, for the 
contemplation of the soul. Therefore the soul 
holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic 



58 IDEALISM. 

Btudy of the universal tablet. It respects the 
end too much, to immerse itself in the means. 
It sees something more important in Christianity, 
than the scandals of ecclesiastical history, or the 
niceties of criticism; and, very incurious con- 
cerning persons or miracles, and not at all dis- 
turbed by chasms of historical evidence, it 
accepts from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, 
as the pure and awful form of religion in the 
world. It is not hot and passionate at the ap- 
pearance of what it calls its own good or bad 
fortune, at the union or opposition of other per- 
sons. No man is its enemy. It accepts what- 
soever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a 
watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer, only 
that it may the better watch 



CHAPTER VII. 

SPIRIT. 

It is essential to a true theory of nature and 
of man, that it should contain somewhat pro- 
gressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may- 
be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot 
be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein 
man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties 
find appropriate and endless exercise. And all 
the uses of nature admit of being summed in 
one, which yields the activity of man an infinite 
scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs 
and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause 
whence it had its origin. It always speaks of 
Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpet- 
ual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always 
to the sun behind us. 

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the 
figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, 
and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest 
man is he who learns from nature the lesson of 
worship. 

Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, 



60 sprarr. 

he that thinks most, will say least. We can 
foresee God in the coarse, and, as itT^ere, distant 
phenomena of matter; but when we try to de- 
fine and describe himself, both language and 
thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools 
and savas^es. That essence refuses to be re- 
corded in propositions, but when man has wor- 
shipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry 
of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. 
It is the organ through which the universal spirit 
speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back 
the individual to it 

"When we consider Spirit, we see that the 
views already presented do not include the whole 
circumference of man. We must add some re- 
lated thoughts. 

Three problems are put by nature to the 
mind ; What is matter ? Whence is it ? and 
Whereto ? The first of these questions only, the 
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith : matter 
is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism 
acquaints us with the total disparity between 
the evidence of our o^vu beine, and the evidence 
of the world's being. The one is perfect ; the 
other, incapable of any assurance ; the mind is 
a part of the nature of things ; the world is a 
divine dream, from which we may presently 
awake to the glories and certainties of day. 



SPIRIT. 61 

Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature 
by other principles than those of carpentry and 
chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence 
of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of 
the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves 
me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, 
to wander without end. Then the heart resists 
it, because it balks the affections in denying 
substantive being to men and women. Nature 
is so pervaded with human life, that there is 
something of humanity in all, and in every par- 
ticular. But this theory makes nature foreign to 
me, and does not account for that consanguinity 
which we acknowledge to it. 
^ Let it stand, then, in the present state of our 
knowledge, merely as a useful introductory hy- 
pothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal dis- 
tinction betv^een the soul and the world. 

But when, following the invisible steps of 
thought, we come to inquire. Whence is matter? 
and Whereto ? many truths arise to us out of the 
recesses of consciousness. We learn that the 
highest is present to the soul of man, that the 
dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or 
love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and 
each entirely, is that for which all things exist, 
and that by which they are ; that spirit creates ; 
that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is 
6 



62 SPIRIT. 

present , one and not compound, it does not act 
upon us from without, that is, in space and 
time, but spiritually, or through ourselves : 
therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme 
Being, does not buUd up nature around us, but 
puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree 
puts forth new branches and leaves through 
the pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth, 
so a man rests upon the bosom of God ; he is 
nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, 
at his need, inexhaustible power. "Who can 
set bounds to the possibilities of man ? Once 
inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold 
the absolute natures of justice and truth, and 
we learn that man has access to the entire 
mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the 
finite. This view, which admonishes me where 
the sources of wisdom and power lie, and points 
to virtue as to 

" The golden key 
Which opes the palace of eternity," 

carries upon its face the highest certificate of 
truth, because it animates me to create my own 
world through the purification of my soul. 

The world proceeds from the same spirit as 
the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior 
incarnation of God, a projection of God in the 



SPIRIT. 63 

unconscious. But it differs from the body in one 
important respect. It is not, like that, now sub- 
jected to the human will. Its serene order is 
inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the pres- 
ent expositor of the divine mind. It is a fixed 
point whereby we may measure our departure. 
As we degenerate, the contrast between us and 
oar house is more evident. We are as much 
strangers in nature, as we arie aliens from God. 
We do not understand the notes of birds. The 
fox and the deer run away from us; the bear 
and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of 
more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, 
the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, 
every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face 
of him? Yet this may show us what discord 
is between man and nature, for you cannot 
freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are 
digging in the field hard by. The poet finds 
something ridiculous in his delight, until he is 
out of the sight of men. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PROSPECTS. 

In inquiries respecting the laws of the worM 
and the frame of things, the highest reason is 
always the truest. That which seems faintly 
possible — it is so refined, is often faint and dim 
because it is deepest seated in the mind among 
the eternal verities. Empuical science is apt to 
cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of 
functions and processes, to bereave the student 
of the manly contemplation of the whole. The 
savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read 
naturalist who lends an entire and devout atten- 
tion to truth, will see that there remains much to 
learn of his relation to the world, and that it is 
not to be learned by any addition or subtraction 
or other comparison of known quantities, but is 
arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a 
continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. 
He will perceive that there are far more excellent 
qualities in the student than preciseness and in- 
fallibility ; that a guess is often more fruitful 
than an indisputable affirmation, and that a 



PROSPECTS. 65 

dream may let us deeper into the secret of na- 
ture than a hundred concerted experiments. 

For, the problems to be solved are precisely 
those which the physiologist and the naturalist 
omit to state. It is not so pertinent to man to 
know all the individuals of the animal kingdom, 
as it is to know whence and whereto is this 
tyrannizing unity in his constitution, which 
evermore separates and classifies things, endeav- 
oring to reduce the most diverse to one form. 
When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my 
purpose to recite correctly the order and super- 
position of the strata, than to know why all 
thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense 
of unity. I cannot greatly honor minuteness in 
details, so long as there is no hint to explain the 
relation between things and thoughts; no ray 
upon the metaphysics of conchology, of botany, 
of the arts, to show the relation of the forms of 
flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the mind, 
and build science upon ideas. In a cabinet of 
natural history, we become sensible of a certain 
occult recognition and sympathy in regard to 
the most unwieldly and eccentric forms of beast, 
fish, and insect. The American who has been 
confined, in his own country, to the sight of 
buildings designed after foreign models, is sur- 
prised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at 
6* 



d6 . PROSPECTS. 

Rome, by the feeling that these structures are 
imitations also, — faint copies of an invisible 
archetype. Nor has science sufficient humanity, 
so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonder- 
ful congruity which subsists between man and 
the world ; of which he is lord, not because he 
is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is 
its head and heart, and finds something of him- 
self in every great and small thing, in every 
mountain stratum, in every new law of color, 
fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence 
which observation or analysis lay open. A per- 
ception of this mystery inspires the muse of 
George Herbert, the beautiful psalmist of the 
seventeenth century. The following lines are 
part of his little poem on Man. 

" Man is all symmetry, 
Full of proportions, one limb to another, 

And to all the world besides. 

Each part may call the farthest, brother ; 
For head with foot hath private amity, 

And both with moons and tides. 

" Nothing hath got so far 
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey ; 

His eyes dismount the highest star ; 

He is in little all the sphere. 
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 

Find their acquaintance there. 



PROSPECTS. . 67 

" For us, the winds do blow, 
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow ; 

Nothing we see, but means our good, 

As our delight, or as our treasure ; 
The whole is either our cupboard of food, 

Or cabinet of pleasure. 

" The stars have us to bed : 
Night draws the curtain ; which the sun withdraws. 

Music and light attend our head. 

All things unto our flesh are kind, 
In their descent and being ; to our mind, 

In their ascent and cause. 

" More servants wait on man 
Than he'll take notice of. In every path, 

He treads down that which doth befriend him 

When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
Oh mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath 

Another to attend him." 

The perception of this class of truths makes 
the attraction which draws men to science, but 
the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. 
In view of this half-sight of science, we accept 
the sentence of Plato, ^ that " poetry comes 
nearer to vital truth than history." Every sur- 
mise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to 
a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imper- 
fect theories, and sentences, which contain 
glimpses of truth, to digested systems which 
have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer 



68 - PROSPECTS. 

will feel that the ends of study and composition 
are best answered by announcing undiscovered 
regions of thought, and so communicating, 
through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit. 

I shall therefore conclude this essay with some 
traditions of man and nature, which a certain 
poet sang t6 me ; and which, as they have 
always been in the world, and perhaps reappear 
to every bard, may be both history and pro- 
phecy. 

* The foundations of man are not in matter, 
but in spirit. But the element of spirit is eter- 
nity. To it, therefore, the longest series of 
events, the oldest chronologies are young and 
recent. In the cycle of the universal man, from 
whom the known' individuals proceed, centuries 
are points, and all history is but the epoch of 
one degradation. 

' We distrust and deny inwardly our sympa- 
thy with nature. We own and disown our 
relation to it, by turns. We are, like Nebuchad- 
nezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating 
grass like an ox. Bilt who can set limits to the 
remedial force of spirit ? 

* A man is a god in ruins. When men are 
innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into 
the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams 
Now, the world would be insane and rabid, if 



PROSPECTS. 69 

these disorganizations should last for hundreds 
of years. It is kept in check by death and in- 
fancy. ^ Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which 
■»,omes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads 
with them to return to paradise. 

' Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was 
permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled 
nature with his overflowing currents. Out from 
him sprang the sun and moon ; from man, the 
sun ; from woman, the moon. The laws of his 
mind, the periods of his actions externized them- 
selves into day and night, into the year and the 
seasons. But, having made for himself this 
huge shell, his waters retired ; he no longer fills 
the veins and veinlets ; he is shrunk to a drop. 
He sees, that the structure still fits him, but fits 
him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him, 
now it corresponds to him from far and on high. 
He adores timidly his own work. Now is man 
the follower of the sun, and woman the follower 
of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts in his 
slumber, and wonders at himself and his house, 
and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt 
him and it. He perceives that if his law is still 
paramount, if still he have elemental power, if 
his word is sterling yet in nature, it is not con- 
scious power, it is not inferior but superior to his 
will. It is Instinct.' Thus my Orphic poet sang 



70 PROSPECTS. 

At present, man applies to nature but half Iii^ 
force. He works on the world with his under- 
standing alone. He lives in it, and masters it 
by a penny-wisdom ; and he that works most in 
it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are 
strong and his digestion good, his mind is im- 
bruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation 
to nature, his power over it, is through the un- 
derstanding; as by manure; the economic use 
of fire, wind, water, and the mariner's needle ; 
steam, coal, chemical agriculture ; the repairs of 
the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. 
This is such a resumption of power, as if a ban- 
ished king should buy his territories inch by 
inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne. 
Meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not 
wanting gleams of a better light, — occasional 
examples of the action of man upon nature with 
his entire force, — with reason as well as under- 
standing. Such examples are ; the traditions of 
miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations ; 
the history of Jesus Christ ; the achievements of 
a principle, as in religious and political revolu- 
tions, and in the abolition of the Slave-trade 
the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of 
Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, , and the Shakers ; 
many obscure and yet contested facts, now 
arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; 



PROSPECTS. 71 

prayer ; eloquence ; self-healing ; and the wis* 
dom of children. These are examples of Rea- 
son's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the 
exertions of a power which exists not in time 
or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming caus- 
ing power. The difference between the actual 
and the ideal force of man is happily figured by 
the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of 
man is an evening knowledge, vespertina cog* 
nitio, but that of God is a morning knowledge, 
matutina cognitio. 

The problem of restoring to the world origi- 
nal and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemp- 
tion of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that 
we see when we look at nature, is in our own 
eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with 
the axis of things, and so they appear not trans- 
parent but opake. The reason why the world 
lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, be- 
cause man is disunited with himself. He cannot 
be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands 
of the spirit. Love is as much its demand, ap 
perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect with- 
out the other. In the uttermost meaning of 
the words, thought is devoutj and devotion is 
thought. Deep calls unto deep. But in actual 
life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are 
innocent men who worship God after the tra- 



72 PROSPECTS. 

dition of their fathers, but their sense of duty 
has not yet extended to the use of all their fac- 
ulties. And there are patient naturalists, but 
they freeze their subject under the wintry light 
of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study 
of truth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound 
infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without 
learning something. But when a faithful thinker, 
resolute to detach every object from personal re- 
lations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, 
at the same time, kindle science with the fire of 
the holiest affections, then will God go forth 
anew into the creation. 

It wiU not need, when the mind is prepared 
for study, to search for objects. The invariable 
mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the 
common. What is a day ? What is a year ? 
What is summer ? What is woman ? "What is 
a child ? What is sleep ? To our blindness, 
these things seem unafiecting. We make fables 
to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it, 
as we say, to the higher law of the mind. But 
when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, 
the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold 
the real hijT'her law. To the wise, therefore, a 
fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of 
fables. These wonders are brought to our own 
door. You also are a man. Man and woman, 



PROSPECTS. 73 

and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, 
fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of 
these things is superficial, but that each phenom- 
enon has its roots in the faculties and affections 
of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occu- 
pies your intellect, nature brings it in the con- 
crete to be solved by your hands. It were a 
wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by 
point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our 
daily history, with the rise and progress of ideas 
in the mind. 

So shall we come to look at the world with 
new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry 
of the intellect, — What is truth ? and of the 
affections, — What is good ? by yielding itself 
passive to the educated Will. Then shall come 
to pass what my poet said ; ' Nature is not fixed 
but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The 
immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence 
of spirit ; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, 
it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house ; 
and beyond its house a world; and beyond its 
world, a heaven. Know then, that the world 
exists for you. For you is the phenomenon per- 
fect. What we are, that only can we see. All 
that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have 
and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and 
earth ; Caesar called his house, Rome ; you perhapa 
7 



74 PROSPECTS. 

call yours, a cobbler's trade ; a hundred acres 
of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet 
line for line and point for point, your dominion 
is as great as theirs, though without fine names. 
Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as 
you bonform your life to the pure idea in your 
mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A 
correspondent revolution in things will attend 
the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable 
appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad- 
houses, prisons, enemies, vanish ; they are tem- 
porary and shall be no more seen. The sordor 
and filths of nature, the siin shall dry up, and 
the wind exhale. As. when the summer comes 
from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the 
face of the earth becomes green before it, so 
shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments 
along its path, and carry with it the beauty it 
visits, and the song which enchants it ; it shall 
draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise dis- 
course, and heroic acts, around its way, until 
evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man 
over nature, which cometh not with observa- 
tion, — a dominion such as now is beyond his 
dream of God, — he shall enter without more 
wonder than the blind man feels who is gradu- 
ally restored to perfect sight.' 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

kJSf OKATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE ?HI BETA KAPPA SOCIETT, 
AT CAMBRIDGE, AUGCjST 31, 1837. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen, 

I GREET you on the recommencement of our 
literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, 
perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet 
for games of strength or skill, for the recitation 
of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient 
Greeks ; for parliaments of love and poesy, like 
the Troubadours ; nor for the advancement of 
science, lilte our contemporaries in the British and 
European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has 
been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the 
love of letters amongst a people too busy to give 
to letters any more. As such, it is precious as 
the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps 
the time is already come, when it ought to be, 
and will be, something else ; when the sluggard 
intellect of this continent will look from under 



T8 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation 
of the world with something better than the 
exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of de- 
pendence, our long apprenticeship to the learning 
^f other lands, draws to a close. The millions, 
♦hat around us are rushing into life, cannot al- 
f^ays be fed on the sere remains of foreign har- 
vests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, 
that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that 
poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the 
star in the constellation Harp, which now flames 
in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one 
day be the pole-star for a thousand years ? 

In this hope, I accept the topic which not only 
usage, but the nature of our association, seem to 
prescribe to this day, — the American Scholar. 
Year by year, we come up hither to read one 
more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire 
what light new days and events have thrown on 
his character, and his hopes. 

It is one of those fables, which, out of an un- 
known antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wis- 
dom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided 
Man into men, that he might be more helpful to 
himself; just as the hand was divided into fin- 
gers, the better to answer its end. 

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and 
Bublime ; that there is One Man, — present to 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 79 

dll particular men only partially, or through one 
faculty ; and that you must take the whole so- 
ciety to find the whole man. Man is not a 
farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is 
all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, 
and producer, and soldier. In the divided or 
social state, these functions are parcelled out to 
individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of 
the joint work, whilst each other performs his. 
The fable implies, that the individual, to possess 
himself, must sometimes return from his own 
labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, 
unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of 
power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has 
been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, 
that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gath- 
ered. The state of society is one in which the 
members have suffered amputation from the 
trunk, and strut about so many walking mon- 
sters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an 
elbow, but never a man. 

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into 
many things. The planter, who is Man sent 
out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered 
by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. 
He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing 
Dpyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of 
iVfan on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever 



80 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden 
by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject 
to dollars. The priest becomes a form ; the at- 
torney, a statute-book ; the mechanic, a machine ; 
the sailor, a rope of the ship. 

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is 
the delegated intellect. In the right state, he 
is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, 
when the victim of society, he tends to becoine 
a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other 
men's thinking. 

In this view" of him, as Man Thinking, the 
theory of his office is contained. Him nature 
solicits with all her placid, all her monitory 
pictures ; him the past instructs ; him the future 
invites. Is Hot, indeed, every man a student, 
and do. not all things exist for the student's 
behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar 
the only true master ? But the old oracle said, 
' All things have two handles : beware of the 
wrong one.' In life, too often, the scholar 
errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. 
Let us see him in his school, and consider 
him in reference to the main influences he 
receives. 

L The first in time and the first in importance 
of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. 



THE AMERICAIT SCHOLAR. 81 

Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and 
her stars. Ever the winds blow ; ever the grass 
grows. Every day, men and women,. conversing, 
beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of 
all men whom this spectacle most engages. He 
must settle its value in his mind. What is 
nature to him? There is never a beginning, 
there is never an end, to the inexplicable con- 
tinuity of this web of God, but always circular 
power returning into itself. Therein it resem- 
bles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose 
ending, he never can find, — so entire, so bound- 
less. Far, too, as her splendors shine, system on 
system shooting like rays, upward, downward, 
without centre, without circumference, — in the 
mass and in the particle, nature hastens to render 
account of herself to the mind. Classification 
begins. To the young mind, every thing is 
individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds 
how to join two things, and see in them one 
nature ; then three, then three thousand ; and 
so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, 
it goes on tying things together, diminishing 
anomalies, discovering roots running under 
ground, whereby contrary and remote things 
cohere, and flower out from one stem. It pre- 
sently learns, that, since the dawn of history, 
there has been a constant accumulation and clas* 



82 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

sifying of facts. But what is classification but 
the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, 
and are not foreign, but have a law which is also 
a law of the human mind ? The astronomer 
discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of 
the human mind, is the measure of planetary 
motion. The chemist finds proportions and in- 
telligible method throughout matter ; and science 
is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, 
in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul 
sits down before each refiractory fact ; one after 
another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new 
powers, to their class and their law, and goes on 
for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, 
the outskirts of nature, by insight. 

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the 
bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and 
it proceed from one root ; one is leaf and one is 
flower ; relation, sympathy, stiring in every 
vein. And what is that root ? Is not that the 
soul of his soul? — A thought too bold, — a 
dream too wild. Yet when this spiritual light 
shall have revealed the law of more earthly 
natures, — when he has learned to worship the 
soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that 
now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic 
hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding 
knowledge as to a becoming creator. He shall 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 83 

gee, that nature is the opposite of the soul, an- 
swering to it part for part. One is seal, and one 
is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own 
mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. 
Nature then becomes to him the measure of his 
attainments. So much of nature as he is igno- 
rant of, so much of his own mind does he not 
yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, 
" Know thyself," and the modern precept, 
" Study nature," become at last one maxim. 

II. The next great influence into the spirit of 
the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, — in what- 
ever form, whether of literature, of art, of insti- 
tutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the 
best type of the influence of the past, and per- 
haps we shall get at the truth, — r learn the 
amount of this influence more conveniently, — 
by considering their value alone. 

The theory of books is noble. The scholar 
of the first age received into him the world 
around ; brooded thereon ; gave it the new ar- 
rangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. 
It came into him, life; it went out from him, 
truth. It came to him, short-lived actions ; it 
went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came 
to him, business ; it went from him, poetry. It 
was dead fact; now, it is quick thought It 



84 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it 
now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in propor- 
tion to the depth of mind from which it issued, 
sp high does it soar, so long does it sing. 

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the 
process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. 
In proportion to the completeness of the distil- 
lation, so will the purity and imperishableness 
of the product be. But none is quite perfect. As 
no air-pump can by any means make a perfect 
vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely ex- 
clude the conventional, the local, the perishable 
from his book, or write a book of pure thought, 
that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a re- 
mote posterity, as to cotemporaries, or rather to 
the second age. Each age, it is found, must 
write its own books ; or rather, each generation 
for the next succeeding. The books of an older 
period wiU not fit this. 

Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sa- 
credness which attaches to the act of creation, — 
the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. 
The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man : 
henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer 
was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is 
settled, the ' book is perfect ; as love of the hero 
corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, 
the book becomes noxious : the guide is a tyrant* 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 85 

The sluggish and perverted mind of the multi- 
tude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, 
having once so opened, having once received this 
book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it 
is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books 
are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Think- 
ing ; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, 
who set out from accepted dogmas, not from 
their own sight of principles. Meek young men 
grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to 
accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, 
which Bacon, have given ; forgetful that Cicero, 
Locke, and Bacon were only young men in librae 
ries, when they wrote these books. 

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the 
bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who 
value books, as such ; not as related to nature 
and the human constitution, but as making a 
sort of Third Estate with the world and the 
soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the 
emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. 

Books are the best of things, well used ; 
abused, among the worst. "What is the right 
use ? "What is the one end, which all means go 
to effect ? They are for nothing but to inspire. 
I had better never see a book, than to be warped 
by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and 
made a satellite instead of a system. The one 

8 



86 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. 
This every man is entitled to; this every man 
contains within him, although, in almost aJl 
men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul 
active sees absolute truth ; and utters truth, or 
creates. In this action, it is genius ; not the 
privilege of here and there a favorite, but the 
Bound estate of every man. In its essence, it is 
orogressive. The book, the college, the school 
of art, the institution of any kind, stop with 
some past utterance of genius. This is good, 
«ay they, — let us hold by this. They pin me 
down. They look backward and not forward. 
But genius looks forward: the eyes of man 
are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: 
man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents 
may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of 
the Deity is not his ; — cinders and smoke there 
may be, but not yet flame. There are creative 
manners, there are creative actions, and creative 
words ; manners, actions, words, that is, indica- 
tive of no custom or authority, but springing 
spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good 
and fair. 

On the other part, instead of being its own 
seer, let it receive from another mind its truth, 
though it were in torrents of light, without 
periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery, 



THE AMEEICAN SCHOLAR. 87 

and a fatal disservice is done. Genius is always 
sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influ- 
ence. The literature of every nation bear me 
witness. The English dramatic poets have 
Shakspearized now for two hundred years. 

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, 
so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking 
must not be subdued by his instruments. Books 
are for the scholar's idle times. When he can 
read God directly, the hour is too precious to be 
wasted in other men's transcripts of their read- 
ings. But when the intervals of darkness come, 
as come they must, — when the sun is hid, and 
the stars withdraw their shining, — we repair to 
the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to 
guide our steps to the East again, where the 
dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The 
Arabian proverb says, " A fig tree, looking on a 
fig tree, becometh fruitful." 

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure 
we derive from the best books. They impress 
us with the conviction, that one nature wrote 
and the same reads. We read the verses of one 
of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Mar- 
veil, of Dryden, with the most modern joy, — 
with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part 
caused by the abstraction of all time from their 
verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy 



88 ' THE AMEKICA2T SCHOLAR. 

of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in 
some past world, two or three hundred years 
ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, 
that which I also had wellnigh thought and 
said. But for the evidence thence afforded to 
the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all 
minds, we should suppose some preestablished 
harmony, some foresight of souls that were to 
be, and some preparation of stores for their fu- 
ture wants, like the fact observed in insects, 
who lay up food before death for the young grub 
they shall never see. 

I would not be hurried by any love of system, 
by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate 
the Book. We all know, that, as the human 
body can be nourished on any food, though it 
were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the 
human mind can be fed by any knowledge. 
And great and heroic men have existed, who 
had almost no other information than by the 
printed page. I only would say, that it needs a 
strong head to bear that diet. One must be an 
inventor to read well. As the proverb says, 
" He that would bring home the wealth of the 
Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." 
There is then creative reading as weU as creative 
writing. When the mind is braced by labor 
find invention, the page of whatever book we 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 89 

read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. 
Every sentence is doubly significant, and the 
sense of our author is as broad as the world. 
We then see, w^hat is always true, that, as the 
seer's hour of vision is short and rare among 
heavy days and months, so is its record, per- 
chance, the least part of his volume. The dis- 
cerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only 
that least part, — only the authentic utterances 
of the oracle ; — all the rest he rejects, were it 
never so many times Plato's and Shakspeare's. 

Of course, there is a portion of reading quite 
indispensable to a wise man. History an,d exact 
science he must learn by laborious reading. Col- 
leges, in like, manner, have their indispensable 
office, — to teach elements. But they can only 
highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but 
to create ; when they gather from far every ray 
of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, 
by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their 
youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are 
natures in which apparatus and pretension avail 
nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, 
though of towns of gold, can never countervail 
the least sentence or syllable of w^it. Forget 
this, and our American colleges wall recede in 
their public importance, w^hilst they grow richer 
every year. 

' 8* 



90 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

III. There goes in the world a notion, that 
the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudina- 
rian, — as unfit for any handiwork or public 
labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so-called 
* practical men ' sneer at speculative men, as if, 
because they speculate or see^ they could do 
nothing. I have heard it said that the clergy, 
— who are always, more universally than any 
other class, the scholars of their day, — are ad- 
dressed as women ; that the rough, spontaneous 
conversation of men they do not hear, but only 
a mincing and diluted speech. They are often 
virtually disfranchised; and, indeed, there are 
advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is 
true of the studious classes, it is not just and 
wise.' Action is with the scholar subordinate, 
but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet 
man. Without it, thought can never ripen into 
truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye 
as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its 
beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be 
no scholar without the heroic mind. The pre- 
amble of thought, the transition through which 
it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, 
is action. Only so much do I know, as I have 
lived. Instantly we know whose words are 
loaded with life, and whose not. 

The world, — this shadow of the soul, or 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 91 

other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are 
the keys which unlock my thoughts and make 
me acquainted with myself. ' I run eagerly into 
this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of 
those next me, and take my place in the ring 
to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct, that 
so shall the dumb abyss be vocal with speech. 
I pierce its order ; I dissipate its fear ; I dispose 
of it within the circuit of my expanding life. 
So much only of life as I know by experience, 
so much of the wilderness have I vanquished 
and planted, or so far have I extended my being, 
my dominion. I do not see how any man can 
afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to 
spare any action in which he can partake. It is 
pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, 
calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in 
eloquence and wisdoiji. The true scholar grudges 
every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of 
power. 

Jt is the raw material out of which the intel- 
lect moulds her splendid products. A strange 
process too, this, by which experience is con- 
verted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is 
converted into satin. The manufacture goes 
forward at all hours. 

The actions and events of our childhood and 
youth, are now matters of calmest observation. 



92 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

They lie like fair pictures in the air. iVot so 
with our recent actions, — with the business 
which we now have in hand. On this we are 
quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet 
circulate through it. We no more feel or know 
it, than we feel the feet, or the hand, or the 
brain of our body. The new deed is yet a part 
of life, — remains for a time immersed in our 
unconscious life. In some contemplative hour, 
it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit,^ to 
become a thought of the mind. Instantly, it is 
raised, transfigured ; the corruptible has put on 
incorruption. Henceforth it is an object of 
beauty, however base its origin and neighbor- 
hood. Observe, too, the impossibility of ante- 
dating this act. In its grub state, it cannot fly, 
it cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, 
without observation, the selfsame thing unfm'l? 
beautiful wings, and is an angel of wisdom. So 
is there no fact, no event, in our private history, 
which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, 
inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our 
body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, 
school and playground, the fear of boys, and 
dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and 
berries, and many another fact that once filled 
the whole sky, are gone already; friend ana 
relative, profession and party, town and coun* 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 93 

try, nation and world, must also soar and 
sing. 

Of course, he who has put forth his total 
strength in fit actions, has the richest return of 
wisdom. I will not shut myself out of this globe 
of action, and transplant an oak into a flower-pot, 
there to hunger and pine ; nor trust the revenue 
of some single faculty, and exhaust one vein of 
thought, much like those Savoyards, who, getting 
their livelihood by carving shepherds, shepherd- 
esses, and smoking Dutchmen, for all Europe, 
went out one day to the mountain to find stock, 
and discovered that they had whittled up the 
last of their pine-trees. Authors we have, in 
numbers, v/ho have written out their vein, and 
who, moved by a commendable prudence, sail 
for Greece or Palestine, follow the trapper into 
the prairie, or ramble round Algiers, to replenish 
thek morchantable stock. 

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar 
would be covetous of action. Life is our dic- 
tionary. Years are well spent in country labors ; 
in town, — in the insight into trades and manu- 
fact(7:res ; in frank intercourse with many men 
and women ; in science ; ia art ; to the one end 
of master.ng in all their facts a language by 
which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. 
I le?.r'i immediately from any speaker how much 



94 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

he has already lived, through the poverty or the 
splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as 
the quarry from whence we get tiles and cope^ 
stones for the masonry of to-day. This is the 
way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only 
copy the language which the field and the work- 
yard made. 

But the final value of action, like that of 
books, and better than books, is, that it is a 
resource. That great principle of Undulation in 
nature, that shows itself in the inspiring and ex- 
piring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in 
the ebb and flow of the sea ; in day and night ; 
in heat and cold; and as yet more deeply in- 
grained in every atom and every fluid, is known 
to us under the name of Polarity, — these " fits 
of easy transmission and reflection," as Newton 
called them, are the law of nature because they 
are the law of spirit. 

The mind now thinks; now acts; and each 
fit reproduces the other. When the artist has 
exhausted his materials, when the fancy no 
longer paints, when thoughts are no longer ap- 
prehended, and books are a weariness, — he has 
always the resource to live. Character is higher 
than intellect. Thinldng is the function. Liv- 
ing is the functionary. The stream retreats to 
its source. A great soul will be strong to live, 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 95 

as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ 
or me'dium to impart his truth? He can stiU 
fall back on this elemental force of living them. 
This is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. 
Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. 
Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. 
Those ' far from fame,' who dwell and act with 
him, will feel the force of his constitution in the 
doings and passages of the day better than it can 
be measured by any public and designed display. 
Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no 
hour which the man lives. Herein he unfolda 
the sacred germ of his instinct, screened from 
influence. "What is lost in seemliness is gained 
in strength. Not out of those, on whom sys- 
tems of education have exhausted their culture, 
comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to 
build the new, but out of unhandselled savage 
nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, 
come at last Alfred and Skakspeare. 

I hear therefore with joy whatever is begin- 
ning to be said of the dignity and necessity of 
labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in 
the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as 
for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere 
welcome ; always we are invited to work ; only 
be this limitation observed, that a man shall 
not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any 



96 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

opinion to the popular judgments and modes of 
action. 

I have now spoken of the education of the 
scholar by natm^e, by books, and by action. It 
remains to say somewhat of his duties. 

They are such as become ' Man Thinking. 
They may all be comprised in self-trust. The 
office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to 
guide men by showing them facts amidst ap- 
pearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and 
unpaid task of observation. - Flamsteed and Her- 
schel, in their glazed observatories, may cata- 
logue the stars with the praise of all men, and, 
the results being splendid and useful, honor is 
sure. But he, in his private observatory, cata- 
loguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human 
mind, which as yet no man has thought of as 
such, — watching days and months, sometimes, 
for a few facts ; correcting still his old records ; 
— must relinquish display and immediate fame. 
In the long period of his preparation, he must 
betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in 
popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able 
who shoulder him aside. Long he must stam- 
mer in his speech ; often forego the living for 
the dead. Worse yet, he must accept, — how 
o^ten I poverty and solitude. For the ease and 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 97 

pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the 
fashions, the education, the religion of society, 
he takes the cross of making his own, and, of 
course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the 
frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are 
the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the 
self-relying and self-directed; and the state of 
virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to 
society, and especially to educated society. For 
all this loss and scorn, what offset ? He is to 
find consolation in exercising the highest func- 
tions of human nature. He is one, who raises 
himself from private considerations, and breathes 
and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He 
is the world's eye. He is the world^s heart. He 
is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades 
ever to barbarism, by preserving and communi- 
cating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, me- 
lodious verse, and the conclusions of history. 
Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all 
emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as 
its commentary on the world of actions, — these 
he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever 
new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat 
pronounces on the passing men and events of 
to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate. 

These being his functions, it becomes him to 
feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never 
9 



98 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

to the popular cry. He and he only knows the 
world. The world of any moment is the merest 
appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish 
of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, 
or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried 
down by the other half, as if all depended on 
this particular up or down. The odds are that 
the whole question is not worth the poorest 
thought which the scholar has lost in listening 
to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief 
that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient 
and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the 
crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in se- 
vere abstraction, let him hold by himself; add 
observation to observation, patient of neglect, 
patient of reproach ; and bide his own time, — 
happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone, 
that this day he has seen something truly. Sus- 
cess treads on every right step. For the instinct 
is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what 
he thinks. He then learns, that in going down 
into the secrets of his own mind, he has de- 
scended into the secrets of all minds. He learns 
that he who has mastered any law in his private 
thoughts, is master to that extent of all men 
whose language he speaks, and of all into whose 
language his own can be translated. The poet, 
in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 99 

thoughts and recording them, is found to have 
recorded that, which men in crowded cities find 
true for them also. The orator distrusts at first 
the fitness of his frank confessions, — his want 
of kno\^^ledge of the persons he addresses, — 
until he finds that he is the compliment of his 
hearers ; — that they drink his words because 
he fulfils for them their owti nature ; the deeper 
he dives into his privatest, secretest presenti- 
mentj to his wonder he finds, this is the most 
acceptable, most public, and universally true. 
The people delight in it ; the better part of 
every man feels, This is my music ; this is my- 
self. 

In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. 
Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. 
Free even to the definition of freedom, "with- 
out any hindrance that does not arise out of his 
own constitution." Brave ; for fear is a thing, 
which a scholar by his very function puts be- 
hind him. Fear always springs fi:om ignorance. 
It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid 
dangerous times, arise from the presumption, 
that, like children and women, his is a protected 
class ; or if he seek a temporary peace by the 
diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed 
questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the 
flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and 

Lore. 



100 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his 
courage up. So is the danger a danger still ; so 
is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face 
it. Let him look into its eye and search its na- 
ture, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of 
this lion, — which lies no great way back; he 
will then find in himself a perfect comprehen- 
sion of its nature and extent ; he will have made 
his hands meet on the other side, and can hence- 
forth defy it, and pass on superior. The world 
is his, who can see through its pretension. What 
deafness, what stone-blind custom, what over- 
grown error you behold, is there only by suffer- 
ance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, 
and you have already dealt it its mortal blow. 

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. 
It is a mischievous notion that we are come late 
into nature ; that the world was finished a long 
time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in 
the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his 
attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and 
sin, it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as 
they may ; but in proportion as a man has any 
thing in him divine, the firmament flows before 
him and takes his signet and form. Not he is 
great who can alter matter, but he who can alter 
my state of mind. They are the kings of the 
world who give the color of their present thought 



THE AMEEICAN SCHOLAR. 101 

to all nature and all art, and persuade men by the 
cheerful serenity of their carrying the matter, 
that this thing which they do, is the apple which 
the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, 
and inviting nations to the harvest. The great 
man makes the great thing. Wherever Macdon- 
ald sits, there is the head of the table. Linnaeus 
makes botany the most alluring of studies, and 
wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman ; 
Davy, chemistry ; and Cuvier, fossils. The day 
is always his, who works in it with serenity and 
great aims. The unstable estimates of men 
crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, 
as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the 
moon. 

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than 
can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlight- 
ened. I might not carry with me the feeling of 
my audience in stating my own belief. But I 
have already shown the ground of my hope, in 
adverting to the doctrine that man is one. I be- 
lieve man has been wronged ; he has wronged 
himself. He has almost lost the light, that can 
lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are be- 
come of no account. Men in history, men in the 
world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are 
called ' the mass ' and ' the herd.' In a century 
in a millennium, one or two men ; that is to say 
9* 



102 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

— one or two approximations to the right state 
of every man. All the rest behold in the hero 
or the poet their own green and crude being, — 
ripened ; yes, and are content to be less, so that 
may attain to its full stature. What a testi- 
mony, — full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne 
to the demands of his own nature, by the poor 
clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in the 
glory of his chief. The poor and the low find 
Bome amends to their immense moral capacity, 
for their acquiescence in a political and social 
inferiority. They are content to be brushed 
like flies from the path of a great person, so that 
justice shall be done by him to that common 
nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see 
enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in 
the great man's light, and feel it to be their own 
element. They cast the dignity of man from 
their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a 
hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood 
to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews 
combat and conquer. He lives for us, and we 
live in him. 

Men such as they are, very naturally seek 
money or power; and power because it is as 
good as money, — the " spoils," so called, "of 
office." And why not? for they aspire to the 
highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 103 

dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall 
quit the false good, and leap to the true, and 
leave governments to clerks and desks. This 
revolution is to be wrought by the gradual do- 
mestication of the idea of Culture. The main 
enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, 
is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the ma- 
terials strown along the ground. The private 
life of one man shall be a more illustrious mon- 
archy, — more formidable to its enemy, more 
sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, 
than any kingdom in history. For a man, 
rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular 
natures of all men. Each philosopher, each 
bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a 
delegate, what one day T can do for myself. 
The books which once we valued more than 
the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. 
What is that but saying, that we have come 
up with the point of view which the univer- 
sal mind took through the eyes of one scribe ; 
we have been that man, and have passed on. 
First, one; then, another; we drain all cisterns, 
and, waxing greater by all these supplies, we 
crave a better and more abundant food. The 
man has never lived that can feed us ever. The 
human mind cannot be enshrined in a person, 
who shall set a barrier on any one side to this 



104 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one cen- 
tral fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of 
Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily ; and, now 
out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the 
towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light 
which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one 
soul which animates all men. 

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this 
abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay 
longer to add what I have to say, of nearer 
reference to the time and to this country. 

Historically, there is thought to be a difference 
in the ideas which predominate over successive 
epochs, and there are data for marking the genius 
of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the 
Reflective or Philosophical age. With the views 
I have intimated of the oneness or the identity 
of the mind through aU individuals, I do not 
much dwell on these differences. In fact, I 
believe each individual passes through all three. 
The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the 
adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a 
revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly 
enough traced. 

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. 
Must that needs be evil ? We, it seems, are crit* 
ical ; we are embarrassed with second thoughts* 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 105 

we cannot enjoy any thing for hankering to 
know whereof the pleasure consists ; we are lined 
with eyes; we see with our feet; the time is 
infected with Hamlet's unhappiness, — 

" Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 

It is so bad then ? Sight is the last thing to 
be pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear 
lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink 
truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the 
literary class, as a mere announcement of the 
fact, that they find themselves not in the state 
of mind of their fathers, and regret the coming 
state as untried ; as a boy dreads the water be- 
fore he has learned that he can swim. K there 
is any period one would desire to be born in, 
— is it not the age of Revolution; when the 
old and the new stand side by side, and admit of 
being compared ; when the energies of all men 
are searched by fear and by hope; when the 
historic glories of the old, can be compensated 
by the rich possibilities of the new era? This 
time, like all times, is a very good one, if we 
but know what to do with it. 

I read with some joy of the auspicious signs 
of the coming days, as they glimmer alreaay 
through poetry and art, through philosophy and 
science, through church and state. 



106 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

One of these signs is the fact, that »the same 
movement which effected the elevation of what 
was called the lowest class in the state, assumed in 
literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. 
Instead of the sublime and beautiful ; the near, 
the low, the common, was explored and poetized. 
That, which had been negligently trodden under 
foot by those who were harnessing and provis- 
ioning themselves for long journeys into far 
countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all 
foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the 
feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, 
the meaning of household life, are the topics of 
the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, — is 
it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are 
made active, when currents of warm life run 
into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the 
great, the remote, the romantic ; what is doing 
in Italy or Arabia ; what is Greek art, or Pro- 
vencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I ex- 
plore and sit at the feet- of the familiar, the low. 
Give me insight into to-day, and you may have 
the antique and future worlds. What would we 
really know the meaning of ? The meal in the 
firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the 
street ; the news of the boat ; the glance of the 
eye ; the form and the gait of the body ; — show 
me the ultimate reason of these matters ; show 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 107 

me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual 
cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these 
surburbs and extremities of nature ; let me see 
every trifle bristling with the polarity that 
ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the 
ishop, the plough, and the leger, referred to the 
like cause by which light undulates and poets 
sing; — and the world lies no longer a dull 
miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and 
order ; there is no trifle ; there is no puzzle ; but 
one design unites and animates the farthest pin- 
nacle and the lowest trench. 

This idea has inspired the genius of Gold- 
smith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of 
Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea 
they have differently followed and with various 
success. In contrast with their writing, the style 
of Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and 
pedantic. This writing is blood-warm. Man is 
surprised to find that things near are not less 
beautiful and wondrous than things remote. 
The near explains the far. The drop is a small 
ocean. A man is related to all nature. This 
perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful 
in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the 
most modern of the moderns, has shown us as 
tione ever did, the genius of the ancients. 

There is one man of genius, who has done 



108 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

much for this philosophy of life, whose literary 
value has never yet been rightly estimated; — . 
I mean Emanuel Swedenborg. The most imag- 
inative of men, yet writing with the precision 
of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a 
purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Chris- 
tianity of his time. Such an attempt, of course, 
must have difficulty, which no genius could sur- 
mount. But he saw and showed the connection 
between nature and the affections of the soul. 
He pierced the emblematic or spiritual character 
of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especi- 
ally did his shade-loving muse hover over and 
interpret the lower parts of nature ; he showed 
the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the 
foul material forms, and has given in epical par- 
ables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean 
and fearful things. 

Another sign of our times, also marked by an 
analogous political movement, is, the new impor- 
tance given to the single person. Every thing 
that tends to insulate the individual, — to sur- 
round him with barriers of natural respect, so 
that each man shall feel the world is his, and 
man shall treat with man as a sovereign state 
with a sovereign state ; — tends to true union 
as weU as greatness. " I learned," said the 
melancholy Pestalozzi, " that no man in Goci'a 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 109 

wide earth is either willing or able to help any 
other man." Help must come from the bosom 
alone. The scholar is that man who must take 
up into himself all the ability of the time, all 
the contributions of the past, all the hopes of 
the future. He must be an university of knowl- 
edges. K there be one lesson more than another, 
which should pierce his ear, it is. The world is 
nothing, the man is all ; in yourself is the law 
of all nature, and you know^not yet how a glo- 
bule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the 
whole of Reason ; it is for you to know all, it 
is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentle- 
men, this confidence in the unsearched might of 
man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by 
aU preparation, to the American Scholar. We 
have listened too long to the courtly muses of 
Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is 
already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. 
PubKc and private avarice make the air we 
breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, 
indolent, complaisant See already the tragic 
consequence. The mind of this country, taught 
to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There 
is no work for any but the decorous and the 
complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, 
who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the 
mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of 
10 



110 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 

God, find the earth below not in unsion with 
these, — but are hindered from action by the 
disgust which the principles on which business 
is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of 
disgust, — some of them suicides. What is the 
remedy ? They did not yet see, and thousands 
of young men as hopeful now crowding to the 
barriers for the career, do not yet see, that, if the 
single man plant himself indomitably on his 
instincts, and there abide, the huge world will 
come round to him. Patience, — patience ; — 
with the shades of all the good and great for 
company ; and for solace, the perspective of your 
own infinite life ; and for work, the study and 
the communication of principles, the making 
those instincts pjevalent, the conversion of the 
world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, 
not to be an unit ; — not to be reckoned one 
character ; — not to yield that peculiar fruit 
which each man was created to bear, but to be 
reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the 
thousand, of the party, the section, to which we 
belong ; and our opinion predicted geograph- 
ically, as the north, or the south ? Not so, 
brothers and friends, — please God, ours shall 
not be so. We will walk on our own- feet ; we 
will work with our own hands ; we wall speak 
our own minds. The study of letters shall be 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Ill 

no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and foi 
sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the 
love of man shall be a wall of defence and a 
wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will 
for the first time exist, because each believes 
himself inspired by the Divine Soul wh^ch also 
inspires all men. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE SENIOR CLASS IN DIVINITY COLLEOft 
lAMBRIDGE, SUNDAY EVENING, JULY 15, 1838. 



ADDRESS. 



In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury 
to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, 
the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire 
and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full 
of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, 
the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night 
brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome 
shade. Through the transparent darkness the 
stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under 
them seems a young child, and his huge globe a 
toy. The cool night bathes the world as with 
a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crim- 
son dawn. The mystery of nature was never 
displayed more happily. The corn and the wine 
have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the 
never-broken silence with which the old bounty 
goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of 



116 ADDRESS. 

explanation. One is constrained to respect the 
perfection of this world, in which our senses 
converse. How wide ; how rich ; what invita- 
tion irom every property it gives to every faculty 
of man! In its fruitful soils ; in its navigable 
sea ; in its mountains of metal and stone ; in its 
forests of all woods ; in its animals ; in its chemi- 
cal ingredients ; in the powers and path of light, 
heat, attraction, and life, it is well worth the 
pith and heart of great men to subdue and en- 
joy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inven- 
tors, the astronomers, the builders of cities, and 
the captains, history delights to honor. 

But when the mind opens, and reve2ils the 
laws which traverse the universe, and make 
things what they are, then shrinks the great 
world at once into a mere illustration and fable 
of this mind. What am I ? and What is ? asks 
the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, 
but never to be quenched. Behold these out- 
running laws, which our imperfect apprehension 
can see tend this way and that, but not come 
full circle. Behold these infinite relations, so 
like, so unlike ; many, yet one. I would study, 
I would know, I would admire forever. These 
works of thought have been the entertainments 
of the human spirit in all ages. 

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beanty 



ADDRESS. 117 

appears to man when his heart and mind open 
to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed 
in what is above him. He learns that his being 
is without bound ; that, to the good, to the per- 
fect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and 
weakness. That which he venerates is stiU his 
own, though he has not realized it yet. He 
ought. He knows the sense of that grand word, 
though his analysis fails to render account of it. 
When in innocency, or when by intellectual per- 
ception, he attains to say, — ' I love the Right ; 
Truth is beautiful within and without forever- 
more. Virtue, I am thine : save me : use me : 
thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, 
that I may be not virtuous, but virtue ; ' — then 
is the end of the creation answered, and God is 
well pleased. 

The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and 
delight in the presence of certain divine laws. 
It perceives that this homely game of life we 
play, covers, under what seem foolish details, 
principles that astonish. The child amidst his 
baubles, is learning the action of light, motion, 
gravity, muscular force ; and in the game of 
human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, 
and God, interact. These laws refuse to be 
adequately stated. They will not be written 
out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They 



118 ADDRESS. 

elude our persevering thought ; yet we read them 
hourly in each other's faces, in each other's 
actions, in our own remorse. The moral traits 
which are all globed into every virtuous act and 
thought, — in speech, we must sever, and describe 
or suggest by painful enumeration of many par- 
ticulars. Yet, as this sentiment is the essence 
of all religion, let me guide your eye to the pre- 
cise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration 
of some of those classes of facts in which this 
element is conspicuous. 

The ' intuition of the moral sentiment is an 
Insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. 
These laws execute themselves. They are out 
of time, out of space, and not subject to circum- 
stance. Thus ; in the soul of man there is a 
justice whose retributions are instant and entire. 
He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. 
He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself 
contracted. He who* puts off impurity, thereby 
puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in 
so far is he God ; the safety of God, the immortal- 
ity of God, the majesty of God do enter into that 
man with justice. K a mail dissemble, deceive, 
he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaint- 
ance with his own being. A man in the view of 
absolute goodness, adores, with total humanity. 
Every step so downward, is a step upward. 



ADDRESS. 119 

The man who renounces himself, comes to him* 
self. 

See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh 
everywhere, righting wrongs, correcting appear- 
ances, and bringing up facts to a harmony with 
thoughts. Its operation in life, though slow to 
the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. By 
it, a man is made the Providence to himself, dis- 
pensing good to his goodness, and evil to his 
sin. Character is always known. Thefts never 
enrich ; alms never impoverish ; murder will 
speak out of stone walls. The least admixture 
of a lie, — for example, the taint of vanity, 
any attempt to make a good impression, a favor- 
able appearance, — will instantly vitiate the ef- 
fect. But speak the truth, and all nature and 
all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. 
Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute 
are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass 
underground there, do seem to stir and move 
to bear you witness. See again the perfection 
of the Law as it applies itself to the ajflfections, 
and becomes the law of society. As we are, 
so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek 
the good ; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus 
of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, 
into hell. 

These facts have always suggested to man the 



120 ADDEESS. 

sublime creed, that fhe world is not the product 
of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind ; 
and that one mind is everywhere active, in each 
ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool ; and 
whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked 
and baffled, because things are made so, and not 
otherwise. Good is positive. Evil is merely 
privative, not absolute : it is like cold, which is 
the privation of heat. All evil is so much death 
or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. 
So much benevolence as a man hath, so much 
life hath he. For all things proceed out of this 
same spirit, which is differently named love, 
justice, temperance, in its different applications, 
just as the ocean receives different names on the 
several shores which it washes. All things pro- 
ceed out of the same spirit, and all things con- 
spire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, 
he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In 
so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves 
himself of power, or auxiliaries ; his being shrinks 
out of all remote channels, he becomes less and 
less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is 
absolute death. 

The perception of this law of laws awakens 
in the mind a sentiment which we call the relig- 
ious sentiment, and which makes our highest 
happiness. Wonderful is its powrr to charm and 



ADDRESS. 121 

to command. It is a mountain air. It is the 
embalmer of the world. It is myrrh and storax, 
and chlorine and rosemary. It makes the sky 
and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the 
stars is it. By it, is the universe made safe and 
habitable, not by science or power. Thought 
may work cold and intransitive in things, and 
find no end or unity ; but the dawn of the sen- 
timent of virtue on the heart, gives and is the 
assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures ; 
and the worlds, time, space, eternity^ do seem to 
break out into joy. 

This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is 
the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. 
Through it, the soul first knows itself. It cor- 
rects the capital mistake of the infant man, who 
seeks to be great by following the great, and 
hopes to derive advantages from another^ — by 
showing the fountain of all good to be in him- 
self, and that he, equally with every man, is 
an inlet into the deeps of Reason. When he 
says, " I ought ; " when love warms him ; when 
he chooses, warned from on high, the good 
and great deed; then, deep melodies wander 
through his soul from Supreme Wisdom. — 
Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his 
worship; for he can never go behind this 
sentiment. In the sublimest flights of the soul, 
11 



122 ADDRESS. 

rectitude is never surmounted, love is never oat- 
grown. 

This sentiment lies at the foundation of soci- 
ety, and successively creates all forms of worship. 
The principle of veneration never dies out. Man 
fallen into superstition, into sensuality, is never 
quite without the visions of the moral senti- 
ment. In like manner, all the expressions of 
this sentiment are sacred and permanent in pro- 
portion to their purity. The expressions of this 
sentiment affect us more than all other compo- 
sitions. The sentences of the oldest time, which 
ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. 
This thought dwelled always deepest in the 
minds of men in the devout and contemplative 
East ; not alone in Palestine, where it reached 
its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in 
India, in China. Europe has always owed to 
oriental genius its divine impulses. What these 
holy bards said, aU sane men found agreeable 
and true. And the unique impression of Jesus 
upon mankind, whose name is not so much writ- 
ten as ploughed into the history of this world, is 
proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. 

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand 
open, night and day, before every man, and the 
oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by 
one stern condition; this, namely ; it is an in- 



ADDRESS. 123 

tuition. It cannot be rece.Wei at second hand. 
Truly speaking, it is not inr^tructi^n, but provo- 
cation, that I can receive from another soul. 
What he announces, I muDt find true in me, or 
reject; and on his word, or as his second, be 
he who he may, I can accept nothing. On the 
contrary, the absence of this primary faith is tbe 
presence of degradation. As is the flood &o is 
the ebb. Let this faith depart, and the very 
words it spake, and the things it made, become 
false and hurtful. Then falls the church, the 
state, art, letters, life. The doctrine of the. 
divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects 
and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all ; 
now he is an appendage, a nuisance. And be- 
cause the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot 
wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers 
this perversion, that the divine nature is attribut- 
ed to one or two persons, and denied to all the 
rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine ot 
inspiration is lost ; the base doctrine of the ma- 
jority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine 
of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the 
ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history 
merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the 
aspiration of society ; but, when suggested, seem 
ridiculous. Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as 
the high ends of being fade out of sight, and 



124 ADDRESS. 

man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend 
to what addresses the senses. 

These general views, which, whilst they are 
general, none will contest, find abundant illus- 
tration in the history of religion, and especially 
in the history of the Christian church. In that, 
all of us have had our birth and nurture. The 
truth contained in that, you, my young friends, 
are now setting forth to teach. As the Cultus, 
or established worship of the civilized world, it 
has great historical interest for us. Of its blessed 
words, w^hich have been the consolation of hu- 
manity, you need not that I should speak. I 
shall endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on 
this occasion, by pointing out two errors in its 
administration, which daily appear more gross 
from the point of view we have just now 
taken. 

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of 
prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery 
of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, 
ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had 
his being there. Alone in all history, he esti- 
mated the greatness of man. One man was true 
to what is in you and me. He saw that God 
incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes 
forth anew to take possession of his world. He 
said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ' I am 



ADDRESS. 125 

divine. Through me, God acts ; through me, 
speaks. Would you see God, see me ; or, see 
thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' 
But what a distortion did his doctrine and mem- 
ory suffer in the same, in the next, and the 
following ages ! There is no doctrine of the 
Reason which will bear to be taught by the 
Understanding. The understanding caught this 
high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the 
next age, ' This was Jehovah come down out of 
heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a 
man.' The idioms of his language, and the 
figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of 
his truth; and churches are not built on his 
principles, but on his tropes. Christianity be- 
came a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece 
and of Eg}^pt, before. He spoke of miracles; 
for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all 
that man doth, and he knew that this daily 
miracle shines, as the character ascends. But 
the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian 
churches, gives a false impression ; it is Monster* 
It is not one with the blowing clover and th© 
falling rain. 

He felt respect for Moses and the prophets 
but no unfit tenderness at postponing their ini- 
tial revelations, to the hour and the man thai 
now is ; to the eternal revelation in the heart 
11* 



126 AbtfiiESS. 

Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the 
law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it 
to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and hearty 
and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, 
as I think, the only spul in history who has ap- 
preciated the worth of man. 

1. In this point of view we become sensi- 
ble of the first defect of historical Christianity. 
Historical Christianity has fallen into the er- 
ror that corrupts all attempts to communicate 
religion. As it appears to us, and as it has 
appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the 
soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the 
positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, 
with noxious exaggeration about the person of 
Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites 
every man to expand to the full circle of the 
universe, and will have no preferences but those 
of spontaneous love. But by this eastern mon- 
archy of a Christianity, which indolence and 
fear have built, the friend of man is made the 
injurer of man. The manner in which his 
name is surrounded with expressions, which 
were once sallies of admiration and love, but 
are now petrified into official titles, kills all gen- 
erous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, 
feel, that the language that describes Christ to 
Europe and America, is not the style of Mend 



ADDRESS. 127 

ship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heartj 
but is appropriated and formal, — paints a demi- 
god as the Orientals or the Greeks would de- 
scribe Osiris or Apollo. Accept the injurious 
impositions of our early catechetical instruction, 
and even honesty and self-denial were but splen- 
did sins, if they did not wear the Christian 
name. One would rather be 

* A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,' 

than to be defrauded of his manly right in com- 
ing into nature, and finding not names and 
places, not land and professions, but even virtue 
and truth foreclosed and monopolized. You 
shall not be a man even. You shall not own 
the world ; you shall not dare, and live after the 
infinite Law that is in you, and in company with 
the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth re- 
flect to you in all lovely forms ; but you must 
subordinate your nature to Christ's nature ; you 
must accept our interpretations; and take his 
portrait as the vulgar draw it. 

That is always best which gives me to my- 
self. The sublime is excited in me by the great 
stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which 
shows God in me, fortifies me. That which 
shows Tjrod out of me, makes me a wart and 
a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason 



128 ADDRESS. 

for my being. Already the long shadows ol 
untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall de- 
cease forever. 

The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, 
of my intellect, of my strength. They admon- 
ish me, that the gleams which flash across my 
mind^ are not mine, but God's ; that they had 
the like, and were not disobedient to the heav- 
enly vision. So I love them. Noble provoca- 
tions go out from them, inviting me to resist 
evil; to subdue the world; and to Be. And 
thus by his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and 
thus only. To aim to convert a man by mh'a- 
cles, is a profanation of the soul. A true con- 
version, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be 
made, by the reception of beautiful sentiments. 
It is true that a great and rich soul, like his. 
falling among the simple, does so preponderate, 
that, as his did, it names the world. The world 
seems to them to exist for him, and they have 
not yet drunk so deeply of his sense, as to see 
that only by coming again to themselves, or to 
God in themselves, can they grow forevermore. 
It is a low benefit to give me something ; it is a 
high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of 
myself. The time is coming when all men will 
see, that the gift of God to the soul is not a 
vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but 



ADDRESS. 129 

a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine 
and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to 
be and to grow. 

The injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching 
is not less flagrant to Jesus, than to the souls 
which it profanes. The preachers do not see 
that they make his gospel not glad, and shear 
him of the locks of beauty and the attributes of 
heaven. When I see a majestic Epaminondas, 
or Washington; when I see among my contem- 
poraries, a true orator, an upright judge, a dear 
friend ; when I vibrate to the melody and fancy 
of a poem ; I see beauty that is to be desired. 
And so lovely, and with yet more entire consent 
of my human being, sounds in my ear the 
severe music of the bards that have sung of the 
true God in all ages. Now do not degrade the 
life and dialogues of Christ out of the ckcle of 
this charm, by insulation and peculiarity. Let 
them lie as they befel, alive and warm, part of 
human life, and of the landscape, and of the 
cheerful day. 

2. The second defect of the traditionary and 
limited way of using the mind of Christ is a 
consequence of the first ; this, namely ; that the 
Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revela- 
tions introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, 
into the open soul, is not explored as the foun- 



130 ADDRESS. 

tain of the established teaching in society. Men 
have come to speak of the revelation as some- 
what long ago given and done, as if God were 
dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher ; 
and the goodliest of institutions becomes an un- 
certain and inarticulate voice. 

It is very certain that it is the eiEFect of con- 
versation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a 
desire and need to impart to others the same 
knowledge and love. If utterance is denied, the 
thought lies like a burden on the man. Always 
the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told : 
somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: 
sometimes with pencil on canvas ; sometimes 
with chisel on stone ; sometimes in towers and 
aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded ; 
sometimes in anthems of indefinite music ; but 
clearest and most permanent, in words. 

The man enamored of this excellency, be- 
comes its priest or poet. The office is coeval 
with the world. But observe the condition, the 
ispiritual limitation of the office. The spirit only 
can teach. Not any profane man, not any sen- 
sual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but 
only he can give, who has ; he only can create, 
who is. The man on whom the soul descends, 
through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. 
Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach ; and 



ADDRESS. • 131 

every man can open his door to these angels, 
and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. 
But the man who aims to speak as books enable, 
as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as in- 
terest commands, babbles. Let him hush. 

To this holy office, you propose to devote 
yourselves. I wish you may feel your call in 
throbs of desire and hope. The office is the 
first in the world. It is of that reality, that it 
cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. 
And it is my duty to say to you, that the need 
was never greater of new revelation than now. 
From the views I have already expressed, you 
will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I 
believe, with numbers, of the universal decay 
and now almost death of faith in society. The 
soul is not preached. The Church seems to 
totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this 
occasion, any complaisance would be criminal, 
which told you, whose hope and commission it 
is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of 
Christ is preached. 

It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of 
all thoughtful men against the famine of our 
churches ; this moaning of the heart because it 
is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the 
grandeur, that come alone out of the culture of 
the moral nature ; should be heard through the 



132 ADDRESS. 

sleep of indolence, and over the din of routine. 
This great and perpetual office of the preacher 
is not discharged. Preaching is the expression 
of the moral sentiment in application to the 
duties of life. In how many churches, by how- 
many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible 
that he is an infinite Soul ; that the earth and 
heavens are passing into his mind; that he is 
drinking forever the soul of God? Where now 
sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody 
imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own 
orisfin in heaven? Where shall I hear words 
such as in elder ages drew men to leave all and 
follow, — father and mother, house and land, 
wife and child ? Where shall I hear these august 
laws of moral being so pronounced, as to fill my 
ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my utter- 
most action and passion ? The test of the true 
faith, certainly, should be its power to charm 
and command the soul, as the laws of nature 
control the activity of the hands, — so com- 
manding that we find pleasure and honor in 
obeying. The faith should blend with the 
light of rising and of setting suns, with the fly- 
ing cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of 
flowers. But now the priest's Sabbath has lost 
the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are 
glad when it is done ; we can make, we do 



ADDRESS. 133 

make, even sitting in our pews, a fai better, 
holier, sweeter, for ourselves. 

Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, 
then is the worshipper defrauded and disconso- 
late. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, 
which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. 
We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and 
secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. 
I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me 
to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, 
thought I, where they are wont to go, else had 
no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A 
snow-storm was falling around us. The snow- 
storm was real ; the preacher merely spectral ; 
and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at 
flim, and then out of the window behind him, 
into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had 
lived in vain. He had no one word intimating 
that he had laughed or wept, was married or in 
love, had been commended, or cheated, or cha- 
grined. K he had ever lived and acted, we 
were none the wiser for it. The capital secret 
of his profession, namely, to convert life into 
truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all 
his experience, had he yet imported into his doc- 
trine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and 
talked, and bought, and sold ; he had read books ; 
he had eaten and drunken ; his head aches; 
12 



134 ^ ADDRESS. 

his heart throbs ; he smiles and suffers ; yet was 
there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, 
that he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he 
draw out of real history. The true preacher 
can be known by this, that he deals out to the 
people his life, — life passed through the fire of 
thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not 
be told from his sermon, what age of the world 
he fell in ; whether he had a father or a child ; 
whether he was a freeholder or a pauper ; 
whether he was a citizen or a countryman ; or 
any other fact of his biography. It seemed 
strange that the people should come to church. 
It seemed as if their houses were very unenter- 
taining, that they should prefer this thoughtless 
clamor. It shows that there is a commanding 
attraction in the moral sentimept, that can lend 
a faint tint of light to dulness and ignorance 
coming in its name and place. The good hearer 
is sure he has been touched sometimes ; is sure 
there is somewhat to be reached, and some word 
that can reach it. When he listens to these vain 
words, he comforts himself by their relation to 
his remembrance of better hours, and so they 
clatter and echo unchallenged. 

I am not ignorant that when we preach un- 
worthily, it is not always quite in vain. There 
is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies 



ADDRESS. 135 

to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment 
There is poetic truth concealed in all the com- 
mon-places of prayer and of sermons, and though 
foolishly spoken, they may be wisely heard ; for, 
each is some select expression that broke out in 
a moment of piety from some stricken or jubi- 
lant soul, and its excellency made it remembered. 
The prayers and even the dogmas of our church, 
are like the zodiac of Denderah, and the astro- 
nomical monuments of the Hindoos, wholly insu- 
lated from anything now extant in the life and 
business of the people. They mark the height 
to which the waters once rose. But this docility 
is a check upon the mischief from the good and 
devout. In a large portion of the community, 
the religious service gives rise to quite other 
thoughts and emotions. We need not chide the 
negligent servant. We are struck with pity, 
rather, at the swift retribution of his sloth. 
Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand 
in the pulpit, and not give bread of life. Every- 
thing that befalls, accuses him. Would he ask 
contributions for the missions, foreign or domes- 
tic ? Instantly his face is suffused with shame, 
to propose to his parish, that they should send 
money a hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish 
such poor fare as they have at home, and would 
do well to go the hundred or the thousand milei 



136 ADDRESS. 

to escape. Would he urge people to a godly way 
of living ; — and can he ask a fellow-creature to 
come to Sabbath meetings, when he and they 
all know what is the poor uttermost they can 
hope for therein ? Will he invite them privately 
to the Lord's Supper ? He dares not. If no 
heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking 
formality is too plain, than that he can face a 
man of wit and energy, and put the invitation 
without terror. In the street, what has he to 
say to the bold village blasphemer? The vil- 
lage blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and 
gait of the minister. 

Let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by 
any oversight of the claims of good men. I 
know and honor the purity and strict conscience 
of numbers of the clergy. What life the publi j 
worship retains, it owes to the scattered com- 
pany of pious men, who minister here and there 
in the churches, and who, sometimes accepting 
with too great tenderness the tenet of the elders, 
have not accepted from others, but from their 
own heart, the genuine impulses of virtue, and 
so still command our love and awe, to the sanc- 
tity of character. Moreover, the exceptions are 
not so much to be found in a few eminent 
preachers, as in the better hours, the truer incspi* 
rations of all, — nay, in the sincere moments of 



ADDRESS. 137 

every man. But with whatever exception, it la 
still true, that tradition characterizes the preach- 
ing of this country ; that it comes out of the 
memory, and not out of the soul ; that it aims at 
what is usual, and not at what is necessary and 
eternal ; that thus, historical Christianity destroys 
the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from 
the exploration of the moral nature of man, 
where the sublime is, where are the resources of 
astonishment and power. "What a cruel injus- 
tice it is to that Law, the joy of the whole 
earth, which alone can make thought dear and 
rich ; that Law whose fatal sureness the astro- 
nomical orbits poorly emulate, that it is traves- 
tied and depreciated, that it is behooted and 
behowled, and not a trait, not a word of it 
articulated. . The pulpit in losing sight of this 
Law, loses its reason, and gropes after it knows 
not what. And for want of this culture, the 
soul of the community is sick and faithless. It 
wants nothing so much as a stern, high, stoical, 
Chiistian discipline, to make it know itself and 
the divinity that speaks through it. Now man 
is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneciis 
through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, 
and scarcely in a thousand years does any man 
dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him 
the tears and blessings of his kind. 
12* 



138 ADDRESS. 

Certainly there have been perioas when, from 
the inactivity of the intellect on certain truths, 
a greater faith was possible in names and per- 
sons. The Puritans in England and America, 
found in the .Christ of the Catholic Church, and 
in the dogmas inherited from Rome, scope for 
their austere piety, and their longings for civil 
freedom. But their creed is passing away, and 
none arises in its room. I think no man can go 
with his thoughts about him, into one of our 
churches, without feeling, that what hold the 
public worship had on men is gone, or going. 
It has lost its grasp on the affection of the 
good, and the fear of the bad. In the country, 
neighborhoods, half parishes are signing off^ 
to use the local term. It is already beginning to 
indicate character and religion to withdraw from 
the religious meetings. I have heard a devout 
person, who prized the Sabbath, say in bitter- 
ness of heart, " On Sundays, it seems wicked to 
go to church." And the motive, that holds the 
best there, is now only a hope and a waiting. 
What was once a mere circumstance, that the 
best and the worst men in the parish, the poor 
and the rich, the learned and the ignorant, young 
and old, should meet one day as fellows in one 
house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, 
has come to be a paramount motive for going 
thither. 



ADDRESS. 139 

My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find 
the causes of a decaying church and a wasting 
unbelief. And what greater calamity can fall 
upon a nation, than the loss of worship ? Then 
all things go to decay. Genius leaves the tem- 
ple, to haunt the senate, or the market. Litera- 
ture becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The 
eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other 
worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives 
to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention 
them. 

And now, my brothers, you will ask, What in 
these desponding days can be done by ns ? The 
remedy is akeady declared in the ground of our 
complaint of the Church. We have contrasted 
the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, 
let the redemption be sought. Wherever a man 
comes, there comes revolution. The old is for 
slaves. When a man comes, all books are legi- 
ble, all things transparent, all religions are forms. 
He is religious. Man is the wonderworker. He 
is seen amid miracles. All men bless and curse. 
He saith yea and nay, only. The stationariness 
of religion ; the assumption that the age of in- 
spiration is past, that the Bible is closed; the 
fear of degrading the character of Jesus by rep- 
resenting him as a man ; indicate with suff cient 
«iearness the falsehood of our theology. It U 



140 ADDRESS. 

the office of a true teacher to show us that Goa 
is, not was ; that He speaketh, not spake. The 
true Christianity, — a faith like Christ's in the 
infinitude of man, — is lost. None believeth in 
the soul of man, but only in some man or person 
old and departed. Ah me ! no man goeth alone. 
All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, 
avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They 
cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in 
public. They think society wiser than their 
soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul^ 
is wiser than the whole world. See how nations 
and races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no 
ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one 
good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of 
Zeno, or of Zoroaster, reverend forever. None 
assayeth the stern ambition to be the Self of 
the nation, and of nature, but each would be an 
easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or 
sectarian connection, or some eminent man. 
Once leave your own knowledge of God, your 
own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, 
as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's 
and you get wide from God with every year this 
secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centu- 
ries, — the chasm yawns to that breath* that 
men can scarcely be convinced there is in fhem 
anything divine. 



ADDRESS. 141 

Let me admonish you, iirst of all, to go alone 
to refuse the good models, even those which are 
sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love 
God without mediator or veil. Friends enough 
you shall find who will hold up to your emula- 
tion Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. 
Thank God for these good men, but say, ' I 
also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its 
model. The imitator dooms himself to hope- 
less mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it 
was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. 
In the imitator, something else is natural, and he 
bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come 
short of another man's. 

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, 
— cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint 
men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first 
and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleas- 
ure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not 
bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — 
but live with the privilege of the immeasurable 
mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically aU 
families and each family in your parish con- 
nection, — when }"ou meet one of these men or 
women, be to them a divine man ; be to them 
thought and virtue ; let their timid aspirations 
find in you a friend ; let their trampled instincts 
be genially tempted out in your atmosphere ; let 



142 ADPRESS. 

their doubts know that you have doubted, and 
their wonder feel that you have wondered. By 
trusting your own heart, you shall gain more 
confidence in other men. For all our penny- 
wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to 
habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have 
sublime thoughts ; that all men value the few 
real hours of life ; they love to be heard ; they 
love to be caught up into the vision of prin- 
ciples. We mark with light in the memory the 
few interviews we have had, in the dreary years 
of routine and of sin, with souls that made our 
souls wiser ; that spoke what we thought ; that 
told us what we knew ; that gave us leave to 
be what we inly were. Discharge to men the 
priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall 
be followed with their love as by an angel. 

And, to this end, let us not aim at common 
degrees of merit. Can \i^e not leave, to such as 
love it, the virtue that glitters for the commen- 
dation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep 
solitudes of absolute ability and worth ? We 
easily come up to the standard of goodness in 
society. Society's praise can be cheaply secured, 
and almost all men are content with those easy 
merits ; but the instant effect of conversing with 
God, will be, to put them away. There are per- 
Bons who are not actors, not speakers, but influ* 



ADDRESS. 143 

cnces ; persons too great for fame, for display ; 
who disdain eloquence ; to whom all we call art 
and artist, seems too nearly allied to show and 
by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and 
selfish, and loss of the universal. The orators, 
the poets, the commanders encroach on us only 
as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. 
Slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight 
them, as you can well afford to do, by high and 
universal aims, and they instantly feel that you 
have right, and that it is in lower places that 
they must shine. They also feel your right ; 
for they with you are open to the influx of the 
all-knowing Spirit, which annihilates before its 
broad noon the little shades and gradations of 
intelligence in the compositions we caU wiser 
and wisest. 

In such high communion, let us study the 
grand strokes of rectitude : a bold benevolence, 
an independence of friends, so that not the unjust 
wishes of those who love us, shall impair our 
freedom, but we shall resist for truth's sake the 
freest flow of Idndness, and appeal to sympathies 
far in advance ; and, — what is the highest form 
in which we know this beautiful element, — a 
certain solidity of merit, that has nothing to do 
with opinion, and w^hich is so essentially and 
manifestly virtue, that it is taken for granted. 



144 ADDRESS. 

that the right, the brave, the generous step will 
be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending 
it. You would compliment a coxcomb doing a 
good act, but you would not praise an angel. 
The silence that accepts merit as the most natu- 
ral thing in the world, is the highest applause. 
Such souls, when they appear, are the Imperial 
Guard of Virtue, the perpetual reserve, the dic- 
tators of fortune. One needs not praise their 
courage, — they are the heart and soul of nature. 
O my friends, there are resources in us on which 
we have not drawn. There are men who rise 
refreshed on hearing a threat ; men to whom a 
crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the ma- 
jority, — demanding not the faculties of prudence- 
and thrift, but comprehension, imnlovableness, 
the readiness of sacrifice, — comes graceful and 
beloved as a bride. Napoleon said to Massena, 
that he was not himself until the battle began 
to go against him ; then, when the dead began 
to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of 
combination, and he put on terror and victory as 
a robe. So it is in rugged crises, in unweariable 
endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out 
of question, that the angel is shown. But these 
are heights that we can scarce remember and 
look up to, without contrition and shame. Let 
us thank God that such things exist. 



ADDRESS. 145 

And now let us do what we can to rekindle 
the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. 
The evils of the church that now is are mani- 
fest. The question returns. What shall we do ? 
I confess, all attempts to project and establish a 
Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me 
vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith 
makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive 
a system are as cold as the new worship intro- 
duced by the French to the goddess of Reason, — 
to-day, pasteboard and fiUagree, and ending to- 
morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the 
breath of new life be breathed by you through 
the forms already existing. For, if once you are 
alive, you shall find they shall become plastic 
and new. The remedy to their deformity is, 
first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. 
A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of 
virtue can uplift and vivify. Two inestimable 
advantages Christianity has given us ; first ; the 
Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world ; whose 
light dawns welcome alike into the closet of 
the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and 
into prison-cells, and everywhere suggests, 
even to the vile, the dignity of spuitual being. 
Let us stand forevermore, a temple, which 
new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to 
more than its first splendor to mankind. And 
13 



146 ^ ADDRESS. 

secondly, the institution of preaching, — the 
speech of man to men, — essentially the most 
flexible of all organs, of all forms. "What hinders 
that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture- 
rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invi- 
tation of men or your own occasions lead you, 
you speak the very truth, as your life and con- 
science teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting 
hearts of men with new hope and new revela- 
tion? 

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, 
which ravished the souls of those eastern men,^ 
and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their 
lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the 
West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures 
contain immortal sentences, that have been bread 
of life to millions. But they have no epical in- 
tegrity ; are firagmentary ; are not shown in their 
order to the intellect. I look for the new 
Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining 
laws, that he shall see them come full circle ; 
shall see their rounding complete grace; shaU 
see the world to be the mirror of the soul ; shall 
see the identity of the law of gravitation with 
purity of heart ; and shall show that the Ought, 
that Duty, is one thing with Science, with 
Beauty, and with Joy. 



LITEEARY ETHICS. 

▲N ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE LITERARY SOClETIEf 
OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JULY 24, 1838. 



ORATION. 



Gentlemen, 

The invitation to address you this day, with 
which you have honored me, was a call so wel- 
come, that I made haste to obey it. A summons 
to celebrate with scholars a literary festival, is 
so alluring to me, as to overcome the doubts I 
might well entertain of my ability to bring you 
any thought worthy of your attention. I have 
reached the middle age of man ; yet I believe I 
am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of 
scholars, than when, a boy, I first saw the grad- 
uates of my own College assembled at their 
anniversary. Neither years nor books have yet 
availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in 
me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and 
earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest 
of men. His duties lead him directly into the 
13* 



150 LITERAKY ETHICS. 

holy ground where other men's aspirations only 
pomt. His successes are occasions of the purest 
joy to all men: Eyes is he to the blind; feet is 
he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are 
inlets to higher advantages. And because the 
scholar, by every thought he thinks, extends his 
dominion into the general mind of men, he is 
not one, but many. The few scholars in each 
country, whose genius I know, seem to me not 
individuals, but societies; and, when events occur 
of great import, I count over these representatives 
of opinion, whom they will affect, as if I were 
counting nations. And, even if his results were 
incommunicable ; if they abode in his own spirit; 
the intellect hath somewhat so sacred in its pos- 
sessions, that the fact of his existence and pur- 
suits would be a happy omen. 

Meantime I know that a very different estimate 
of the scholar's profession prevails in this country, 
and the importunity, with which society presses 
its claim upon young men, tends to pervert the 
views of the youth in respect to the culture of 
the intellect. Hence the historical failure, on 
which Europe and America have so freely com- 
mented. This country has not fulfilled what 
seemed the reasonable expectation of man- 
kind. Men looked, when all feudal straps and 
bandages were snapped asunder, that nature, too 



LITERARY ETHICS. 151 

long the mother of dwarfs, should reimburse 
itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh 
and leap in the continent, and run up the moun- 
tains of the West wdth the errand of genius and 
of love. But the mark of American merit in 
painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in 
eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without 
grandeur, and itself not new but derivative, 
a vase of fair outline, but empty, — which who- 
so sees, may fill with what wit and character 
is in him, but which does not, like the charged 
cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit 
lightnings on all beholders. 

I will not lose myself in the desultory ques- 
tions, what are the limitations, and what the 
causes of the fact. It suffices me to say, in 
general, that the diffidence of mankind in the 
soul has crept over the American mind; that 
men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to inno- 
vation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any 
livery productive of ease or profit, to the unpro- 
ductive service of thought. 

Yet, in every sane hour, the service of thought 
appears reasonable, the despotism of the senses 
insane. The scholar may lose himself in schools, 
in words, and become a pedant ; but when he 
comprehends his duties, he above all men is a 
realist, and converses with things. For, the 



152 LITERARY ETHICS. 

Bcholar is the student of the world, and of what 
worth the world is, and with what emphasis it 
accosts the soul of man, such is th^ worth, such 
the call of the scholar. 

The want of the times, and the propriety of 
this anniversary, concur to draw attention to 
the doctrine of Literary Ethics. What I have 
to say on that doctrine distributes itself under 
the topics of the resources, the subject, and the 
discipline of the scholar. 

I. The resources of the scholar are propor- 
tioned to his confidence in the attributes of the 
Litellect. The resources of the scholar are co- 
extensive with nature and truth, yet can never 
be his, unless claimed by him with au equal 
greatness of mind. He cannot know them until 
he has beheld with awe the infinitude and im- 
personality of the intellectual power. When he 
has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but 
that it is the soul which made the world, and 
that it is all accessible to him, he will know that 
he, as its minister, may rightlfully hold all things 
subordinate and answerable to it. A divine pil- 
grim in nature, all things attend his steps. Over 
him stream the flying constellations ; over him 
streams Time, as they, scarcely divided into 
months and years. He inhales the year as a 



LITERARY ETHICS. 153 

vapor: its fragrant midsummer breath, its spark- 
ing January heaven. And so pass into his mind, 
in bright transfiguration, the grand events of his- 
tory, to take a new order and scale from him. 
He is the world ; and the epochs and heroes of 
chronology are pictorial images, in which his 
thoughts are told. There is no event but sprung 
somewhere from the soul of man ; and therefore 
there is none but the soul of man can interpret. 
Every presentiment of the mind is executed 
somewhere in a gigantic fact. "What else is 
Greece, Rome, England, France, St. Helena? 
What else are churches, literatures, and empires ? 
The new man must feel that he is new, and has 
not come into the world mortgaged to the opin- 
ions and usages of Europe, and Asia, and Egypt. 
The sense of spiritual independence is like the 
lovely varnish of the dew, whereby the old, hard, 
peaked earth, and its old self-same productions, 
are made new every morning, and shining with 
the last touch of the artist's hand. A false hu- 
mility, a complaisance to reigning schools, or to 
the wisdom of antiquity, must not defraud me of 
supreme possession of this hour. If any person 
have less love of liberty, and less jealousy to 
guard his integrity, shall he therefore dictate to 
you and me ? Say to such doctors. We are 
thankful to you, as we are to history, to the 



154 LITERARY ETHICS. 

pyramids, and the authors ; but now our day is 
come; we have been born out of the eternal 
silence; and now will we live, — live for our- 
selves, — and not as the pall-bearers of a funeral, 
but as the upholders and creators of our age ; 
and neither Greece nor Rome, nor the three 
Unities of Aristotle, nor the three Kings of 
Cologne, nor the College of the Sorbonne, nor 
the Edinburgh Review, is to command any 
longer. Now that we are here, we will put our 
own interpretation on things, and our own things 
for interpretation. Please himself with com- 
plaisance who will, — for me, things must take 
my scale, not I theirs. I will say with the war- 
like king, " God gave me this crown, and the 
whole world shall not take it away." 

The whole value of history, of biography, is 
to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what 
man can be and do. This is the moral of the 
Plutarchs, the Cudworths, the Tennemanns, who 
give us the story of men or of opinions. Any 
history of philosophy fortifies my faith, by show- 
ing me, that what high dogmas I had supposed 
were the rare and late fruit of a cumulative 
culture, and only now possible to some recent 
Kant or Fichte, — were the prompt improvi- 
sations of the earliest inquirers ; of Parmenides, 
Heraclitus, and Xenophanes. In view of these 



LITERARY ETHICS. 155 

Btudents, the soul seems to whisper, * There 
is a better way than this indolent learning of 
another. Leave me alone ; do not teach me out 
of Leibnitz or Schelling, and I shall find it all 
out myself.' 

Still more do we owe to biography the fortifi- 
cation of our hope. If you would know the 
power of character, see how much you would 
impoverish the world, if you could take clean out 
of history the lives of Milton, Shakspeare, and 
Plato, — these three, and cause them not to be. 
See you not, how much less the power of man 
would be ? I console myself in the poverty of 
my thoughts ; in the paucity of great men, in the 
malignity and dulness of the nations, by falling 
back on these sublime recollections, and seeing 
what the prolific soul could beget on actual 
nature; — seeing that Plato was, and Shaks- 
peare, and Milton, — three irrefragable facts. 
Then I dare; I also will essay to be. The 
humblest, the most hopeless, in view of these 
radiant facts, may now theorize and hope. In 
spite of all the rueful abortions that squeak and 
gibber in the street, in spite of slumber and guilt, 
in spite of the army, the bar-room, and the jail, 
have been these glorious manifestations of the 
mind ; and I will thank my great brothers so 
truly for the admonition of their being, as to 



156 LITERARY ETHICS. 

endeavor also to be just and brave, to aspire and 
to speak. Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the im- 
mortal bards of philosophy, — that which they 
have written out with patient courage, makes 
me bold. No more will I dismiss, with haste, 
the visions which flash and sparkle across my 
sky ; but observe them, approach them, domes- 
ticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the 
past, genuine life for the present hour. 

To feel the full value of these lives, as occa- 
sions of hope and provocation, you must come to 
know, that each admirable genius is but a suc- 
cessful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is 
all your own. The impoverishing philosophy of 
ages has laid stress on the distinctions of the 
individual, and not on the universal attributes of 
man. The youth, intoxicated with his admira- 
tion of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a pro- 
jection of his own soul, which he admires. In 
solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth 
loiters and mourns. With inflamed eye, in this 
sleeping wilderness, he has read the story of the 
Emperor Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has 
brought home to the surrounding woods, the 
faint roar of cannonades in the Milanese, and 
marches in Germany. He is curious concerning 
that man's day. What filled it? the crowded 
orders, the stern decisions, the foreign despatches 



LITERARY ETHICS. 157 

the Castilian etiquette? The soul answers— ^ 
Behold his day here ! In the sighing of these 
woods, in the quiet of these gray fields, in the 
cool breeze that sings out of these northern 
mountains ; in the workmen, the boys, the maid- 
ens, you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, 
the ennui of noon, and sauntering of the after- 
noon ; in the disquieting comparisons ; in the 
regrets at want of vigor; in the great idea, 
and the puny execution ; — behold Charles the 
Fifth's day ; another, yet the same ; behold 
Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, Sci- 
pio's, Pericles's day, — day of all that are born 
of women. The difference of circumstance is 
merely costume. I am tasting the self-same 
life, — its sweetness, its greatness, its pain, 
which I so admire in other men. Do not fool- 
ishly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated past, 
what it cannot tell, — the details of that nature, 
of that day, called Byron, or Burke ; — but ask 
it of the enveloping Now ; the more quaintly 
you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful 
details, its spiritual causes, its astounding w^hole, 
— so much the more you master the biography 
of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord 
of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you 
can put up your history books. 

An intimation of these broad rights is familiar 
14 



158 LITERARY ETHICS. 

in the sense of injury which men feel in the 
assumption of any man to limit their possible 
progress. We resent all criticism, which denies 
us any thing that lies in our line of advance. 
6ay to the man of letters, that he cannot paint 
d Transfiguration, or build a steamboat, or be a 
grand-marshal, — and he will not seem to him- 
self depreciated. But deny to him any quality 
of hterary or metaphysical power, and he is 
piqued. Concede to him genius, which is a sort 
of Stoical plenum annulling the comparative, 
and he is content ; but concede him talents 
never so rare, denying him genius, and he is 
aggrieved. What does this mean ? Why sim- 
ply, that the soul has assurance, by instincts and 
presentiments, of all power in the direction of 
its ray, as well as of the special skills it has al- 
ready acquired. 

In order to a knowledge of the resources of 
the scholar, we must not rest in the use of slen- 
der accomplishments, — of faculties to do this 
and that other feat with words; but we must 
pay our vows to the highest power, and pass, if 
it be possible, by assiduous love and watching, 
into the visions of absolute truth. The growth 
of the intehect is strictly analogous in all indi- 
viduals. It is larger reception. Able men, in 
general, have good dispositions^ and a respect for 



LITERARY ETHICS. 15& 

'ustice ; because an able man is nothing else than 
a good, free, vascular organization, whereinto the 
universal spirit freely flows ; so that his fund of 
justice is not only vast, but infinite. All men, 
in the abstract, are just and good ; what hinders 
them, in the particular, is, the momentary pre- 
dominance of the finite and individual over the 
general truth. The condition of our incarnation 
in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual ten- 
dency to prefer the private law, to obey the pri- 
vate impulse, to the exclusion of the law of 
universal being. The hero is great by means of 
the predominance of the universal nature ; he 
has only to open his mouth, and it speaks ; he 
has only to be forced to act, and it acts. All 
men catch the word, or embrace the deed, with 
the heart, for it is verily theirs as much as his ; 
but in them this disease of an excess of organi- 
zation cheats them of equal issues. Nothing is 
more simple than greatness ; indeed, to be sim- 
ple is to be great. The vision of genius comes 
by renouncing the too officious activity of the 
understanding, and giving leave and amplest 
privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of 
this must all that is alive and genial in thought 
go. Men grind and grind in the mill of a tru- 
ism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. 
But the moment they desert the tradition for a 



160 LITERARY ETHICS. 

spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, 
virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid. 
Observe the phenomenon of extempore debate, 
A man of cultivated mind, but reserved habits, 
sitting silent, admires the miracle of free, im- 
passioned, picturesque speech, in the man ad- 
dressing an assembly ; — a state of being and 
power, how unlike his own ! Presently his own 
emotion rises to his lips, and overflows in speech. 
He must also rise and say somewhat. Once em- 
barked, once having overcome the novelty of the 
situation, he finds it just as easy and natural to 
speak, — to speak with thoughts, with pictures, 
with rhythmical balance of sentences, — as it 
was to sit sUent ; for, it needs not to do, but to 
suffer ; he only adjusts himself to the free spirit 
which gladly utters itself through him ; and mo- 
tion is as easy as rest 

11. I pass now to consider the task offered to 
the intellect of this country. The view I have 
taken of the resources of the scholar, presupposes 
a subject as broad. We do not seem to have 
imagined its riches. We have not heeded the 
invitation it holds out. To be as good a scholar 
as Englishmen are ; to have as much learning as 
our contemporaries ; to have written a book 
that is read ; satisfies us. We assume, that all 



UTEHARY ETHICS. 161 

thought is aheady long ago adequately set down 
in books, — ail imaginations in poems ; and what 
we say, we only throw in as confirmatory of this 
supposed complete body of literature. A very 
shallow assumption. Say rather, all literature is 
yet to be written. Poetry has scarce chanted its 
first song. The perpetual admonition of nature 
to us, is, ' The world is new, untried. Do not 
believe the past. I give you the universe a vir- 
gin to-day.' 

By Latin and English poetry, we were born 
and bred in an oratorio of praises of nature, — 
flowers, birds, mountains, sun, and moon ; — yet 
the naturalist of this hour finds that he knows 
nothing, by all their poems, of any of these fine 
things ; that he has conversed with the mere 
surface and show of them all ; and of their es- 
sence, or of their history, knowing nothing. Fur- 
ther inquiry will discover that nobody, — that 
not these chanting poets themselves, knew any 
thing sincere of these handsome natures they 
so commended ; that they contented themselves 
with the passing chirp of a bird, that they saw 
one or two mornings, and listlessly looked at 
sunsets, and repeated idly these few glimpses in 
their song. But go into the forest, you shall 
find all new and undescribed. The hawking 
of the wild geese flying by night ; the thin note 
14* 



162 LITERARY ETHICS. 

of the companionable titmouse, in the winter 
day ; the fah of swarms of flies, in autumn, from 
combats high in the au', pattering down on the 
leaves like rain ; the angry hiss of the wood- 
birds ; the pine throwing out its pollen for the 
benefit of the next century ; the turpentine ex- 
uding from the tree ; — and, indeed, any vegeta- 
tion; any animation; any and all, are alike 
unattempted. The man who stands on the sea- 
shore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be 
the first man that ever stood on the shore, or en- 
tered a grove, his sensations and his world are so 
novel and strange. Whilst I read the poets, I 
think that nothing new can be said about morn- 
ing and evening. But when I see the daybreak, 
I am not reminded of these Homeric, or ^haks- 
pearian, or Miltonic, or Chaucerian pictures. No ; 
but I feel perhaps the pain of an alien world ; a 
world not yet subdued by the thought ; or, I am 
cheered by the moist, warm, glittering, budding, 
melodious hour, that takes down the narrow 
walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsa- 
tion to the very horizon. That is morning, to 
cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this 
sickly body, and to become as large as nature. 

The noonday darkness of the American for- 
est, the deep, echoing, aboriginal woods, where 
the living columns of the oak and fir tower up 



LITERARY ETHICS. 163 

from the ruins of the trees of the last millen- 
nium ; where, from year to year, the eagle and 
the crow see no intruder ; the pines, bearded 
with savage moss, yet touched with grace by 
the violets at their feet ; the broad, cold lowland, 
which forms its coat of vapor with the stillness 
of subterranean crystallization; and where the 
traveller, amid the repulsive plants that are na- 
tive in the swamp, thinks with pleasing terror of 
the distant town ; this beauty, — haggard and 
desert beauty, which the sun and the moon, the 
snow and the rain, repaint and vary, has never 
been recorded by art, yet is not indifferent to 
any passenger. All men are poets at heart. 
They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness 
overcomes them sometimes. What mean these 
journeys to Niagara ; these pilgrims to the White 
Hills ? Men believe in the adaptations of utility, 
always : in the mountains, they may believe in 
the adaptations of the eye. Undoubtedly, the 
changes of geology have a relation to the pros- 
perous sprouting of the corn and peas in my 
kitchen garden ; but not less is there a relation 
of beauty between my soul and the dim crags 
of Agiocochook up there in the clouds. Every 
man, when this is told, hearkens with joy, and 
yet his own conversation with nature is still un- 
sung. 



164 LITERARY ETHICS. 

Is it otherwise with civil history? Is it not 
the lesson of our experience that every man, 
were life long enough, would write history for 
himself? "What else do these volumes of ex- 
tracts and manuscript commentaries, that every 
scholar writes, indicate ? Greek history is one 
thing to me; another to you. Since the birth 
of Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and Greek History 
have been written anew. Since Carlyle wrot^ 
French History, we see that no history, that we 
have, is safe, but a new classifier shall give it 
new and more philosophical arrangement. Thu- 
cydides, Livy, have only provided materials. 
The moment a man of genius pronounces the 
name of the Pelasgi, of Athens, of the Etrurian, 
of the Roman people, we see their state under a 
new aspect. As in poetry and history, so in the 
other departments. There are few masters oi 
none. Religion is yet to be settled on its fast 
foundations in the breast of man ; and politics, 
and philosophy, and letters, and art. As yet we 
have nothing but tendency and indication. 

This starting, this warping of the best literary 
works from the adamant of nature, is especially 
observable in philosophy. Let it take what tone 
of pretension it will, to this complexion must it 
come, at last. Take, for example, the French 
Eclecticism, which Cousin esteems so conclu- 



LITERARY ETHICS, 165 

sive ; there is an optical illusion in it. It avows 
great pretensions. It looks as if they had all 
truth, in taking all the systems, and had nothing 
to do, but to sift and wash and strain, and 
the gold and diamonds would remain in the 
last colander. But, Truth is such a flyaway, 
such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbar- 
relable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch . 
as light. Shut the shutters never so quick, 
to keep all the light in, it is all in vain; it 
is gone before you can cry, Hold. And so 
it happens with our philosophy. Translate, 
collate, distil all the systems, it steads you 
nothing ; for truth will not be compelled, in any 
mechanical manner. But the first observation 
you make, in the sincere act of your nature, 
though on the veriest trifle, may open a new 
view of nature and of man, that, lilie a men- 
struum, shall dissolve all theories in it; shall 
take up Greece, Rome, Stoicism, Eclecticism, 
and what not, as mere data and food for analy- 
sis, and dispose of your world-containing system, 
as a very little unit. A profound thought, any- 
where, classifies all things : a profound thought 
will lift Olympus. The book of philosophy is 
only a fact, and no more inspiring fact than an- 
other, and no less ; but a wise man will never 
esteem it anything final and transcending. Go 



166 LITERARY ETHICS. 

and talk with a man of genius, and the first 
word he utters, sets all your so-called knowledge 
afloat and at large. Then Plato, Bacon, Kant, 
and the Eclectic Cousin, condescend instantly to 
be men and mere facte. 

I by no means aim, in these remarks, to dis- 
parage the merit of these or of any existing com- 
. positions ; I only say that any particular portrait- 
ure does not in any manner exclude or forestall a 
new attempt, but, when considered by the soul, 
warps and shrinks away. The inundation of 
the spirit sweeps away before it all our little 
architecture of wit and memory, as straws and 
straw-huts before the torrent. Works of the 
intellect are great only by comparison with each 
other ; Ivanhoe and Waverley compared with 
Castle RadclifFe and the Porter novels ; but noth- 
ing is great, — not mighty Homer and Milton, — 
beside the infinite Reason. It carries them away 
as a flood. They are as a sleep. 

Thus is justice done to each generation and 
individual, — wisdom teaching man that he shall 
not hate, or fear, or mimic his ancestors ; that he 
shall not bewail himself, as if the world was old, 
and thought was spent, and he was born into the 
dotage of things; for, by virtue of the Deity, 
thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, 
and the thing whereon it shines, though it were 



LITERARY ETHICS. 16T 

dust and sand, is a new subject with countless 
relations. 

III. Having thus spoken of the resources and 
the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith 
proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. 
Let him know that the world is his, but he 
must possess it by putting himself into har- 
mony with the constitution of things. He must 
be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable 
soul. 

He must embrace solitude as a bride. He 
must have his glees and his glooms alone. His 
own estimate must be measure enough, his own 
praise reward enough for him. And why must 
the student be solitary and silent? That he 
may become acquainted with his thoughts. If 
he pines in a lonely place, hankering for the 
crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely place ; 
his heart is in the market ; he does not see ; he 
does not hear ; he does not think. But go cher-? 
ish your soul ; expel companions; set your hab- 
its to a life of solitude ; then, will the faculties 
rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field 
flowers ; you will have results, which, when you 
meet your fellow-men, you can communicate, 
and they will gladly receive. Do not go into 
solitude only that you may presently come into 



168 LITERARY ETHICS. 

public. Such solitude denies itself; is public 
and stale. The public can get public experi- 
ence, but they wish the scholar to replace to 
them those private, sincere, divine experiences, 
of which they have been defrauded by dwelling 
in the street. It is the noble, manlike, just 
thought, which is the superiority demanded of 
you, and not crowds but solitude confers this 
elevation. Not insulation of place, but inde- 
pendence of spirit is essential, and it is only as 
the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock, 
are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that they 
are of value. Think alone, and all places are 
friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived 
in cities have been hermits stDl. Inspiration 
makes solitude anywhere. Pindar, Raphael, An- 
gelo, Dryden, De Stael, dwell in crowds, it may 
be, but the instant thought comes, the crowd 
grows dim to their eye ; their eye fixes on the 
horizon, — on vacant space ; they forget the by- 
standers ; they spurn personal relations ; they 
deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. 
They are alone with the mind. 

Of course, I would not have any superstition 
about solitude. Let the youth study the uses of 
solitude and of society. Let him use both, not 
serve either. The reason why an ingenious soul 
shuns society, is to the end of finding society. 



LITERARY ETHICS. 169 

It repudiates the false, out of love of the true. 
You can very soon learn all that society can 
teach you for one .while. Its foolish routine, an 
indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides 
theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. 
Then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual 
emptiness and waste, which true nature gives 
you, and retire, and hide ; lock the door ; shut 
the shutters ; then welcome falls the imprisoning 
rain, — dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect 
the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. 
Digest and correct the past experience ; and 
blend it with the new and divine life. 

You will pardon me. Gentlemen, if I say, I 
think that we have need of a more rigorous 
scholastic rule; such an asceticism, I mean, as 
only the hardihood and devotion of the scholar 
himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on 
the surface, — a thin, plausible, superficial ex- 
istence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art 
and creation. But out of our shallow and frivo- 
lous way of life, how can greatness ever grow ? 
Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit 
with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, 
Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners, 
and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, 
with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Si- 
lence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into 
15 



170 LITERARY ETHICS. 

the grandeur and secret of our being, and so 
diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the 
sublimities of the moral constitution. How 
mean to go blazing, a gaudy butterfly, in fash- 
ionable or political saloons, the fool of society, 
the fool of notoriety, a topic for newspapers, a 
piece of the street, and forfeiting the real pre- 
rogative of the russet coat, the privacy, and the 
true and warm heart of the citizen ! 

Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is 
the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes 
our being. A mistake of the main end to which 
they labor, is incident to literary men, who, 
dealing with the organ of language, — the sub- 
tlest, strongest, and longest-lived of man's cre- 
ations, and only fitly used as the weapon of 
thought and of justice, — learn to enjoy the 
pride of playing with this splendid engine, but 
rob it of its almightiness by failing to work with 
it. Extricating themselves from the tasks of 
the world, the world revenges itself by expos- 
ing, at every turn, the folly of these incom- 
plete, pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. The 
scholar will feel, that the richest romance, — the 
noblest fiction that was ever woven, — the heart 
and soul of beauty, — lies enclosed in human 
life. ^ Itself of surpassing value, it is also the 
richest material for his creations. How shall 



LITERARY ETHICS. 171 

he know its secrets of tenderness, of terror, of 
will, and of fate ? How can he catch and keep 
the strain of upper music that peals from it ? It^« 
laws are concealed under the details of daily ac- 
tion. All action is an experiment upon them. 
He must bear his share of the common load. He 
must work with men in houses, and not with 
their names in books. His needs, appetites, tal- 
ents, affections, accomplishments, are keys that 
open to him the beautiful museum of human life. 
Why should he read it as an Arabian tale, and 
not kiK)w, in his own beating bosom, its sweet 
and smart ? Out of love and hatred, out of earn- 
ings, and borrowings, and lendings, and losses ; 
out of sickness and pain ; out of wooing and 
worshipping ; out of travelling, and voting, and 
watching, and caring ; out of disgrace and con- 
tempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beau- 
tiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson ; let him 
learn it by heart. Let him endeavor exactly, 
bravely, and cheerfully, to solve th^ problem of 
that life which is set before him. And this, by 
punctual action, and not by promises or dreams. 
Believing, as in God, in the presence and favor 
of the grandest influences, let him deserve that 
favor, and learn how to receive and use it, by 
fidelity also to the lower observances. 

This lesson is taught with emphasis in the 



172 LITERARY ETHICS. 

life of the great actor of this age, and affords the 
explanation of his success. Bonaparte represents 
truly a great recent revolution, which we in thiu 
country, please God, shall carry to its farthest 
consummation. Not the least instructive passage 
in modern histpry, seems to me a trait of Napo- 
leon, exhibited to the English when he became 
their prisoner. On coming on board the Belle- 
rophon, a file of English soldiers drawn up on 
deck, gave him a military salute. Napoleon 
observed, that their manner of handling their 
arms differed from the French exercise, and, 
putting aside the guns of those nearest him, 
walked up to a soldier, took his gun, and himself 
went through the motion in the French mode. 
The English officers and men looked on with 
astonishment, and inquired if such familiarity 
was usual with the Emperor. 

In this instance, as always, that man, with 
whatever defects or vices, represented perform- 
ance in lieu of pretension. Feudalism and 
Orientalism had long enough thought it majestic 
to do nothing; the modern majesty consists in 
work. He belonged to a class fast growing in 
the world, who think, that what a man can do 
is his greatest ornament, and that he always 
consults his dignity by doing it. He was not 
a believer in luck ; he had a faith, like sight, 



LITEEARY ETHICS. 173 

In the application of means to ends. Means 
to ends, is the motto of all his behavior. He 
believed that the great captains of antiquity 
performed their exploits only by correct combi- 
nations, and by justly comparing the relation 
between means and consequences ; efforts and 
obstacles. The vulgar call good fortune thai 
which really is produced by the calculations of 
genius. But Napoleon, thus faithful to facts, 
had also this crowning merit ; that, whilst he 
believed in number and weight, and omitted no 
part of prudence, he believed also in the freedom 
and quite incalculable force of the soul. A man 
of infinite caution, he neglected never the least 
particular of preparation, of patient adaptation ; 
yet nevertheless he had a sublime confidence, as 
in his all, in the sallies of the courage, and the 
faith in his destiny, which, at the right moment, 
repaired all losses, and demolished cavalry, infan- 
try, king, and kaisar, as with irresistible thun- 
derbolts. As they say the bough of the tree has 
the character of the leaf, and the whole tree of 
the bough, so, it is curious to remark, Bonaparte's 
army partook of this double strength of the cap- 
tain ; for, whilst strictly supplied in all its appoint- 
ments, and everything expected from the valor 
and discipline of every platoon, in flank and cen- 
tre, yet always remained his total trust in the pro* 
15* 



174 LITERARY ETHICS- 

digious revolutions of fortune, which his reserved 
Imperial Guard were capable of working, if, in 
all else, the day was lost. Here he was sublime. 
He no longer calculated the chance of the can- 
non ball. He was faithful to tactics to the 
uttermost, — and when all tactics had come to 
an end, then, he dilated, and availed himself of 
the mighty saltations of the most formidable 
soldiers in nature. 

Let the scholar appreciate this combination of 
gifts, which, applied to better purpose, make true 
wisdom. He is a revealer of things. Let him 
first learn the things. Let him not, too eager to 
grasp some badge of reward, omit the work to 
be done. Let him know, that, though the suc- 
cess of the market is in the reward, true success 
is the doing ; that, in the private obedience to 
his mind ; in the sedulous inquiry, day after day, 
year after year, to know how the thing stands ; 
in the use of all means, and most in the reverence 
of the humble commerce and humble needs of 
life, — to hearken what they say, and so, by 
mutual reaction of thought and life, to make 
thought solid, and life wise; and in a contempt 
for the gabble of to-day's opinions, the secret of 
the world is to be learned, and the skill truly to 
unfold it is acquired. Or, rather, is it not, that, 
by this discipline, the usurpation of the senses la 



LITERARY ETHICS. 175 

overcome, and the lower faculties of man are 
subdued to docility ; through which, as an un- 
obstructed channel, the soul now easily and 
gladly flows ? 

The good scholar will not refuse to bear the 
yoke in his youth ; to know, if he can, the utter- 
most secret of toil and endurance ; to make his 
own hands acquainted with the soil by which 
he is fed, and the sweat that goes before comfort 
and luxury. Let him pay his tithe, and serve 
the world as a true and noble man ; never for- 
getting to worship the immortal divinities, who 
whisper to the poet, and make him the utterer of 
melodies that pierce the ear of eternal time. 
If he have this twofold goodness, — the drill and 
the inspiration, — then he has health; then he 
is a whole, and not a fragment ; and the perfec- 
tion of his endowment will appear in his compo- 
sitions. Indeed, this twofold merit characterizes 
ever the productions of great masters. The man 
of genius should occupy the whole space between 
God or pure mind, and the multitude of unedu- 
cated men. He must draw from the infinite 
Reason, on one side ; and he must penetrate into 
the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. 
From one, he must draw his strength ; to the 
other he must owe his aim. The one yokes 
him to the real ; the other, to the apparent. At 



176 LITERARY ETHICS. 

one pole, is Reason ; at the other, Common 
Sense. If he be defective at either extreme of 
the scale, his philosophy will seem low and 
"utilitarian ; or it will appear too vague and in- 
definite for the uses of life. 

The student, as we all along insist, is great 
only by being passive to the superincumbent 
spirit. Let this faith, then, dictate all his action. 
Snares and bribes abound to mislead him ; let 
him be true nevertheless. His success has its 
perils too. There is somewhat inconvenient and 
injurious in his position. They whom his 
thoughts have entertained or inflamed, seek him 
before yet they have learned the hard conditions 
of thought. They seek him, that he may turn 
his lamp on the dark riddles whose solution 
they think is inscribed on the walls of their 
being. They find that he is a poor, ignorant 
man, in a white-seamed, rusty coat, like them- 
selves, no wise emitting a continuous stream of 
light, but now and then a jet of luminous 
thought, followed by total darkness ; moreover, 
that he cannot make of his infrequent illumination 
a portable taper to carry whither he would, and 
explain now this dark riddle, now that. Sorrow 
ensues. The scholar regrets to damp the hope 
of ingenuous boys ; and the youth has lost a star 
out of his new flaming firraament. Hence the 



UTEEAET ETHICS. 177 

temptation to the scholar to mystify ; to hear 
the question ; to sit upon it ; to make an answer 
of words, in lack of the oracle of things. Not 
the less let him be cold and true, and wait in 
patience, knowing that truth can make even 
silence eloquent and memorable. Truth shall be 
policy enough for him. Let him open his breast 
to all honest inquiry, and be an artist superior to 
tricks of art. Show frankly as a saint would do, 
your experience, methods, tools, and means. 
Welcome all comers to the freest use of the same. 
And out of this superior frankness and charity, 
you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, 
which gods will bend and aid you to communi- 
cate. 

K, with a high trust, he can thus submit him- 
self, he will find that ample returns are poured 
into his bosom, out of what seemed hours of 
obstruction and loss. Let him not grieve too 
much on account of unfit associates. When he 
sees how much thought he owes to the disagree- 
able antagonism of various persons who pass and 
cross him, he can easily think that in a society 
of perfect sympathy, no word, no act, no record, 
would be. He will learn, that it is not much 
matter what he reads, what he does. Be a scho- 
lar, and he shall have the scholar's part of every 
thing. As, in the counting-room, the merchant 



178 LITERARY ETHICS. 

cares little whether the cargo be hides or barilla ; 
the transaction, a letter of credit or a transfer of 
stocks ; be it what it may, his commission comes 
gently out of it; so you shall get your lesson out 
of the hour, and the object, whether it be a con- 
centrated or a wasteful employment, even in 
reading a dull book, or working off a stint of 
mechanical day labor, which your necessities or 
the necessities of others impose. 

Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these 
considerations upon the scholar's place, and hope, 
because I thought, that, standing, as many of 
you now do, on the threshold of this College, 
girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and 
private, in your country, you would not be sorry 
to be admonished of those primary duties of the 
intellect, whereof you will seldom hear from the 
lips of your new companions. You wUl hear 
every day the maxims of a low prudence. You 
will hear, that the first duty is to get land and 
money, place and name. ' What is this Truth 
you seek ? what is this Beauty ? ' men will ask, 
with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called 
any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be 
firm, be true. When you shall say, ' As others 
do, so will I : I renounce, I am sorry for it, my 
early visions ; I must eat the good of the land 



LITERARY ETHICS. 179 

and let learning and romantic expectations go, 
until a more convenient season ; ' — then dies the 
man in you ; then once more perish the buds of 
art, and poetry, and science, as they have died 
already in a thousand thousand men. The hour 
of that choice is the crisis of your history ; and 
see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. 
It is this domineering temper of the sensual 
world, that creates the extreme need of the 
priests of science ; and it is the ofEce and right 
of the intellect to make and not take its estimate. 
Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you 
from every object in nature, to be its tongue to 
the heart of man, and to show the besotted world 
how passing fair is wisdom. Forewarned that 
the vice of the times and the country is an ex- 
cessive pretension, let us seek the shade, and find 
wisdom in neglect. Be content with a little 
light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. 
Be neither chided nor flattered out of your posi- 
tion of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, 
nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should 
you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit 
deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an 
acre, house, and barn ? Truth also has its roof, 
and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary 
to the world, and mankind will give you bread, 
and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take 



180 LITERARY ETHICS. 

away your property in all men's possessions, in 
all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in 
nope. 

You will not fear, that I am enjoining too 
stern an asceticism. Ask not, Of what use is a 
scholarship that systematically retreats? or, Who 
is the better for the philosopher who conceals his 
accomplishments, and hides his thoughts from 
the waiting world ? Hides his thoughts ! Hide 
the sun and moon. Thought is all light, and 
publishes itself to the universe. It will speak, 
though you were dumb, by its own miraculous 
organ. It will flow out of your actions, your 
manners, and your face. It will bring you 
friendships. It will impledge you to truth by 
the love and expectation of generous minds. By 
virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one 
and perfect, it shall yield every sincere good 
that is in the soul, to the scholar beloved of 
earth and heaven. 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

AS ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OP THE ADELFRI, 
IN WATERVILLE COLLEGE, MAINE, AUGUST 11, 1841. 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 



Gentlemen, 

Let us exchange congratulations on the enjoy- 
ments and the promises of this literary anniver- 
sary. The land we live in has no interest so 
dear, if it knew its want, as the fit consecration 
of days of reason and thought. Where there is 
no vision, the people perish. The scholars are 
the priests of that thought which establishes the 
foundations of the earth. No matter what is 
their special work or profession, they stand for 
the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a 
common calamity if they neglect their post in a 
country where the material interest is so pre- 
dominant as it is in America. We hear some- 
thing too much of the results of machinery, 
commerce, and the useful arts. We are a puny 
and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and fol- 



184 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

lowing, are our diseases. The rapid wealth which 
hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or 
by the incessant expansions of our population 
and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest ; the 
luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the 
bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine 
to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, 
the house, and the very body and feature of 
man. 

I do not wish to look with sour aspect at the 
industrious manufacturing village, or the mart of 
commerce. I love the music of the water-wheel; 
I value the railway ; I feel the pride which the 
sight of a ship inspires ; I look on trade and 
every mechanical craft as education also. But 
let me discriminate what is precious herein. 
There is in each of tliese works an act of inven- 
tion, an intellectual step, or short series of steps 
taken ; that act or step is the spiritual act ; all 
the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand 
times. And I will not be deceived into admiring 
the routine of handicrafts and mechanics, how 
splendid soever the result, any more than I ad- 
mire the routine of the scholars or clerical class. 
That splendid results ensue from the labors of 
stupid men, is the fruit of higher laws than their 
will, and the routine is not to be praised for it. 
I would not have the laborer sacrificed to the 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 185 

result, — I would not have the laborer sacrificed 
to my convenience and pride, nor to that of a 
great class of such as me. Let there be worse 
cotton and better men. The weaver should not 
be bereaved of his superiority to his work, and 
his knowledge that the product or the skill is of 
,no value, except so far as it embodies his spiritual 
prerogatives. If I see nothing to admire in the 
unit, shall I admire a million units ? Men stand 
in awe of the city, but do. not honor any individ- 
ual citizen ; and are continually yielding to this 
dazzling result of numbers, that which they 
would never yield to the solitary example of 
any one. 

Whilst the multitude of men degrade each 
other, and give currency to desponding doctrines, 
the scholar must be a bringer of hope, and must 
reinforce man against himself. I sometimes be- 
lieve that our literary anniversaries will presently 
assume a greater importance, as the eyes of men 
open to their capabilities. Here, a new set of 
distinctions, a new order of ideas, prevail. Here, 
we set a bound to the respectability of wealth, 
and a bound to the pretensions of the law and 
the church. The bigot must cease to be a bigot 
to-day. Into our charmed circle, power cannot 
enter ; and the sturdiest defender of existing in- 
stitutions feels the terrific inflammability of thia 
16* 



183 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

air which condenses heat in every corner that 
may restore to the elements the fabrics of ages. 
Nothing solid is secure ; every thing tilts and 
rocks. Even the scholar is not safe ; he too is 
searched and revised. Is his learning dead? Is 
he living in his memory ? The power of mind 
is not mortification, but life But come forth, 
thou curious child ! hither, thou loving, all-hop- 
ing poet! hither, thou tender, doubting heart, 
which hast not yet found any place in the world's 
market fit for thee ; any wares which thou 
couldst buy or sell, — so large is thy love and 
ambition, — thine and not theirs is the hour. 
Smooth thy brow, and hope and love on, for the 
kind Heaven justifies thee, and the whole world 
feels that thou art in the right. 

We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions 
of manly joy. Not thanks, not prayer seem quite 
the highest or truest name for our communica- 
tion with the infinite, — but glad and conspiring 
reception, — reception that becomes giving in its 
turn, as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part 
and in infancy. I cannot, — nor can any man, — 
speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems 
to me, the wit of man, his strength, his grace, 
his tendency, his art, is the grace and the pres- 
ence of God. It is beyond explanation. When 
all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 187 

only logician. Not exhortation, not argument 
becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. 
But not of adulation : we are too nearly related 
in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It is 
God in us which checks the language of petition 
by a grander thought. In the bottom of the 
heart, it is said ; ' I am, and by me, O child ! this 
fair body and world of thine stands and grows. 
I am ; all things are mine : and aU mine are 
thine.' 

The festival of the intellect, and the return to 
its source, cast a strong light on the always inter- 
esting topics of Man and Nature. We are forci 
bly reminded of the old want. There is no man ; 
there hath never been. The Intellect still asks 
that a man may be born. The flame of life 
flickers feebly in human breasts. We demand 
of men a richness and universality we do not 
find. Great men do not content us. It is their 
solitude, not their force, that makes them con- 
spicuous. There is somewhat indigent and 
tedious about them. They are poorly tied to 
one thought. If they are prophets, they are 
egotists ; if polite and various, they are shallow. 
How tardily men arrive at any result ! how tar- 
dily they pass fi:om it to another ! The crystal 
sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geo- 
logical structure of the globe. As our soils and 



188 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all 
men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically. 
Here comes by a great inquisitor with auger and 
plumb-line, and will bore an Artesian well through 
our conventions and theories, and pierce to the 
core of things. But as soon as he probes the 
crust, behold gimlet, plumb-line, and philosopher 
take a lateral direction, in spite of all resistance, 
as if some strong wind took everything off its 
feet, and if you come month after month to see 
what progress our reformer has made, — not an 
inch has he pierced, — you still find him with 
new words in the old place, floating about in new 
parts of the same old vein or crust. The new 
book says, ' I will give you the key to nature,' 
and we expect to go like a thunderbolt to the 
centre. But the thunder is a surface phenome- 
non, makes a skin-deep cut, and so does the sage. 
The wedge turns out to be a rocket. Thus a 
man lasts but a very little while, for his mono- 
mania becomes insupportably tedious in a few 
months. It is so with every book and person : 
and yet — and yet — we do not take up a new 
book, or meet a new man, v/ithout a pulse-beat 
of expectation. And this invincible hope of a 
more adequate interpreter is the sure prediction 
of his advent. 

In the absence of man, we turn to nature. 



THE METHOD OF NATUEE. 189 

which stands next. In the divine order, intellect 
is primary; nature, secondary ; it is the memory 
of the mind. That which once existed in intel- 
lect as pure law, has now taken body as Nature. 
It existed already in the mind in solution ; now, 
it has been precipitated, and the bright sediment 
is the world. We can never be quite strangers 
or inferiors in nature. It is flesh of our flesh, 
and bone of our bone. But we no longer hold 
it by the hand ; we have lost our mkaculous 
power ; our arm is no more as strong as the frost ; 
nor our will equivalent to gravity and the elec- 
tive attractions. Yet we can use nature as a 
convenient standard, and the meter of our rise 
and fall. It has this advantage as a witness, it 
cannot be debauched. When man curses, na- 
ture still testifies to truth and love. We may, 
therefore, safely study the mind in nature, be- 
cause we cannot steadily gaze on it in mind ; as 
we explore the face of the sun in a pool, when 
our eyes cannot brook his direct splendors. 

It seems to me, therefore, that it were some 
suitable paean, if we should piously celebrate this 
hour by exploring the method of nature. Let 
us see that^ as nearly as we can, and try how 
far it is transferable to the literary life. Every 
earnest glance we give to the realities around 
us, with intent to learn, proceeds from a holy im* 



190 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

pulse, and is really songs of praise. What dif 
ference can it make whether it take the shape of 
exhortation, or of passionate exclamation, or of 
scientific statement ? These are forms merely. 
Through them we express, at last, the fact, that 
God has done thus or thus. 

In treating a subject so large, in which we 
must necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim 
much more to suggest, then to describe, I know 
it is not easy to speak with the precision attain- 
able on topics of less scope. I do not w4sh in 
attempting to paint a man, to describe an air-fed, 
unimpassioned, impossible ghost. My eyes and 
ears are revolted by any neglect of the physical 
facts, the limitations of man. And yet one who 
conceives the true order of nature, and beholds 
the visible as proceeding from the invisible, can- 
not state his thought, without seeming to those 
who study the physical laws, to do them some 
injustice. There is an intrinsic defect in the 
organ. Language overstates. Statements of the 
infinite, are usually felt to be unjust to the 
finite, and blasphemous. Empedocles undoubt- 
edly spoke a truth of thought, when he said, " I 
am God ; " but the moment it was out of his 
mouth, it became a lie to the ear ; and the world 
revenged itself for the seeming arrogance, by the 
good storjf about his shoe. How can I hope for 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 191 

better hap in my attempts to enunciate spiritual 
facts ? Yet let us hope, that as far as we receive 
the truth, so far shall we be felt by every true 
per?oh to say what is just. 

The method of nature : who could ever ana- 
lyze it ? That rushing stream will not stop to 
be observed. We can never surprise nature in a 
corner; never find the end of a thread; never 
tell where to set the first stone. The bird has- 
tens to lay her egg : the egg hastens to be a 
bird. The wholeness we admire in the order of 
the world, is the result of infinite distribution. 
Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of 
the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual 
inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, 
and that from which it emanates is an emanation 
also, and from every emanation is a new emana- 
tion. If anything could stand still, it would be 
crushed and dissipated by the torrent it resisted, 
and if it were a mind, would be crazed ; as in- 
sane persons are those who hold fast to one 
thought, and do not flow with the course of 
nature. Not the cause, but an ever novel effect, 
nature descends always from above. It is un- 
broken obedience. The beauty of these fair 
objects is imported into them, from a metaphysi 
cal and eternal spring. In all animal and vege 
table forms, the physiologist concedes that no 



192 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

chemistry, no mechanics, can account for the 
facts, but a mysterious principle of life must be 
assumed, which not only inhabits the organ, but 
makes the organ. 

How silent, how spacious, what room foi 
all, yet without place to insert an atom, — in 
graceful succession, in equal fulness, in balanced 
beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward 
still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of 
music, like a sleep, it is inexact and bound- 
less. It will not be dissected, nor unravelled, 
nor shown. Away profane philosopher! seek- 
est thou in nature the cause? This refers to 
that, and that to the next, and the next to the 
third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in 
another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou 
must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by 
which it exists, ere thou canst know the law. 
Known it will not be, but gladly beloved and 
enjoyed. 

The simultaneous life throughout the whrle 
body, the equal serving of innumerable ends 
without the least emphasis or preference to any, 
but the steady degradation of each to the suc- 
cess of all, allows the understanding no place to 
work. Nature can only be conceived as existing 
to a universal and not to a particular end, to a 
universe of ends, and not to one, — a work of 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 193 

ecstasy^ to be represented by a circular move- 
ment, as intention might be signified by a 
straight line of definite length. Each effect 
strengthens every other. There is no revolt in 
all the kingdoms from the commonweal: no 
detachment of an individual. Hence the cath- 
olic^, character which makes every leaf and ex- 
ponent of the world. When we behold the 
landscape in a poetic spirit, we do not reckon 
individuals. Nature knows neither palm nor oak, 
but only vegetable life, which sprouts into for - 
ests, and festoons the globe with a garland of 
grasses dnd vines. 

That no single end may be selected, and na- 
ture judged thereby, appears from this, that if 
man himself be considered as the end, and it be 
assumed that the final cause of the world is to 
make holy or wise or beautiful men, we see that 
it has not succeeded. Read alternately in natu- 
ral and in civil history, a treatise of astronomy, 
for example, with a volume of French Memoires 
pour servir. When we have spent our won- 
der in computing this wasteful hospitality with 
which boon nature turns off new firmaments 
without end into her wide common, as fast as 
the madrepores make coral, — suns and planets 
hospitable to souls, — - and then shorten the sight 
to look into this court of Louis Quatorze, and 
17 



194 THE METHOD OF NATUEE. 

see the game that is played there, — duke and 
marshal, abb^ and madame, — a gambling table 
where each is laying traps for the other, where 
the end is ever by some lie or fetch to outwit 
your rival and ruin him with this solemn fop in 
wig and stars, — the king; one can hardly help 
asking if this planet is a fair specimen of the so 
generous astronomy, and if so, whether the ex- 
periment have not failed, and whether it be 
quite worth while to make more, and glut the 
innocent space with so poor an article. 

I think we feel not much otherwise if, instead 
of beholding foolish nations, we take the great 
and wise men, the eminent souls, and narrowly 
inspect their biography. None of them seen by 
himself — and his performance compared with 
his promise or idea, wiU justify the cost of that 
enormous apparatus of , means by which this 
spotted and defective person was at last pro- 
cured. 

To questions of this sort, nature replies, * I 
grow.' All is nascent, infant. When we are 
dizzied with the arithmetic of the savant toiling 
to compute the length of her line, the return of 
her curve, we are steadied by the perception that 
a great deal is doing ; that all seems just begun ; 
remote aims are in active accomplishment. We 
can point nowhere to anything final ; but ten* 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. - 195 

dency appears on all hands : planet, system, con- 
stellation, total nature is gi'owing like a field of 
maize in July; is becoming somewhat else; is 
in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not 
more strive to be man, than yonder burr of light 
we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a 
globe, and parent of new stars. Why should 
not then these messieurs of Versailles strut and 
plot for tabourets and ribbons, for a season, with- 
out prejudice to their faculty to run on better 
errands by and by. 

But nature seems further to reply, * I have 
ventured so great a stake as my success, in no 
single creature. I have not yet arrived at any 
end. The gardener aims to produce a fine peach 
or pear, but my aim is the health of the whole 
tree, — root, stem, leaf, flower, and seed, — and 
by no means the pampering of a monstrous peri- 
carp at the expense of all the other functions.' 

In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that im- 
pression nature makes on us, is this, that it does 
not exist to any one or to any number of partic* 
ular ends, but to numberless and endless benefit ; 
that there is in it no private will, no rebel leaf 
or limb, but the whole is oppressed by one su- 
perincumbent tendency, obeys that redundancy 
or excess of life which in conscious beings we 
\;all ecstasy. 



196 THE METHOD OF KATURE. 

With this conception of the genius or methoo 
of nature, let us go back to man. It is true, he 
pretends to give account of himself to himself, 
but, at last, what has he to recite but the fact 
that there is a Life not to be described or known 
otherwise than by possession ? What account 
can he give of his essence more than so it was 
to be ? The 7'07/al reason, the Grace of God 
seems the only description of our multiform but 
ever identical fact. There is virtue, there is 
genius, there is success, or there is not. There 
is the incoming or the receding of God : that is 
all we can affirm ; and we can show neither how 
nor w^hy. Self-accusation, remorse, and the di- 
dactic morals of self-denial and strife with sin, 
is a view we are constrained by our constitution 
to take of the fact seen from the platform of 
action ; but seen from the platform of intellec- 
tion, there is nothing for us but praise and won- 
der. 

The termination of the world in a man, 
appears to be the last victory of intelligence. 
The universal does not attract us until housed 
in an individual. Who heeds the waste abyss 
of possibility? The ocean is everywhere the 
same, but it has no character until seen with the 
Fhore or the ship. Who would value any num- 
ber of miles of Atlantic brine bounded by lines 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 197 

of latitude and longitude ? Confine it by gran- 
ite rocks, let it wash a shore where wise men 
dwell, and it is filled with expression ; and the 
point of greatest interest is where the land and 
water meet. So must we admire in man, the 
form of the formless, the concentration of the 
vast, the house of reason, the cave of memory. 
See the play of thoughts! what nimble gigantic 
creatures are these ! what saurians, what palai- 
otheria shall be named with these agile movers ? 
The great Pan of old, who was clothed in a 
leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of 
things and the firmament, his coat of stars, — 
was but the representative of thee, O rich and 
various Man ! thou palace of sight and sound, 
carrying in thy senses the morning and the 
night and the unfathomable galaxy ; in thy 
brain, the geometry of the City of God ; in thy 
heart, the bower of love and the realms of right 
and wTong. An individual man is a fruit which 
it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. 
The history of the genesis or the old mythology 
repeats itself in the experience of every child. 
He too is a demon or god thrown into a particu- 
lar chaos, where he strives ever to lead things 
from disorder into order. Each individual sou] 
is such, in virtue of its being a power to trans- 
late the world into some particular language oi 
17* 



198 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

its own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a 
dance, — why, then, into a trade, an art, a sci- 
ence, a mode of living, a conversation, a charac- 
ter, an influence. You admire pictures, but it is 
as impossible for you to paint a right picture, as 
for grass to bear apples. But when the genius 
comes, it makes fingers : it is pliancy, and the 
power of transferring the affair in the street into 
oils and colors. Raphael must be born, and 
Salvator must be born. 

There is no attractiveness like that of a new 
man. The sleepy nations are occupied with 
their political routine. England, France and 
America read -Parliamentary Debates, which no 
high genius now enlivens ; and nobody will read 
them who trusts his own eye : only they who 
are deceived by the popular repetition of distin- 
guished names. But when Napoleon unrolls his 
map, the eye is commanded by original power. 
When Chatham leads the debate, men may well 
listen, because they must listen. A man, a per- 
sonal ascendency is the only great phenomenon. 
When nature has work to be done, she creates a 
genius to do it. Follow the great man, and you 
shall see what the world has at heart in these 
ages. There is no omen like that. 

But what strikes us in the fine genius ia 
that which belongs of right to every one. A 



THE METHOD OF NATUEE. 199 

man should know himself for a necessary actor. 
A link was wanting between two craving part3 
of nature, and he was hurled into being as the 
bridge over that yawning need, the mediator be- 
twixt two else unmarriageable facts. His two 
parents held each of one of the wants, and the 
union of foreign constitutions in him enables 
him to do gladly and gracefully what the assem- 
bled human race could not have sufficed to do. 
He knows his materials ; he applies himself to 
his work ; he cannot read, or think, or look 
but he unites the hitherto separated strands into 
a perfect cord. The thoughts he delights to 
utter are the reasan of his incarnation ? Is it for 
him to account himself cheap and superfluous, 
or to linger by the wayside for opportunities ? 
Did he not come into being because something 
must be done which he and no other is and 
does ? K only he sees^ the world will be visible 
enough. He need not study where to stand, 
nor to put things in favorable lights ; in him is 
the light, from him all things are illuminated to 
their centre. What patron shall he ask for em- 
ployment and reward ? Hereto was he born, to 
deliver the thought of his heart from the uni- 
verse to the universe, to do an office which 
nature could not forego, nor he be discharged 
from rendering, and then immerge again into the 



200 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

holy silence and eternity out of which as a maa 
he arose. God is rich, and many more men than 
one he harbors in his bosom, biding their time 
and the needs and the beauty of all. Is not this 
the theory of every man's genius or faculty ? 
Why then goest thou as some Boswell or listen- 
ing worshipper to this saint or to that? That 
is the only lese-majesty. Here art thou with 
whom so long the universe travailed in labor , 
darest thou think meanly of thyself whom the 
stalwart Fate brought forth to unite his ragged 
sides, to shoot the gulf, to reconcile the irre- 
concilable ? 

"Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to 
exist, his health and erectness consist in the 
fidelity with which he transmits influences from 
the vast and universal to the point on which his 
genius can act. The ends are momentary: they 
are vents for the current of inward life which 
increases as it is spent. A man's wisdom is to 
know that all ends are momentary, that the best 
end must be superseded by a better. But there 
is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his 
thought from the life to the ends, to quit his 
agency and rest in his acts : the tools runs away 
with the workman, the human with the divine. 
T conceive a man as always spoken to from be- 
hind, and unable to turn his head and see tlie 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. ^ 201 

Speaker. In all the millions who have heard the 
voice, none ever saw the face. As children in 
their play run behind each other, and seize one 
by the ears and make him walk before them, 
so is the spirit our unseen pilot. That well- 
known voice speaks in all languages, governs all 
men, and none ever caught a glimpse of its form. 
If the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt 
him, so that he shall not any longer separate it 
from himself in his thought, he shall seem to be 
it, he shall be it. If he listen with insatiable 
ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him, 
the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is 
borne away as with a flood, he becomes careless 
of his food and of his house, he is the fool of 
ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye 
is set on the things to be done, and not on the 
truth that is still taught, and for the sake of 
which the things are to be done, then the voice 
grows faint, and at last is but a.humnrring in his 
ears. His health and grfeatness consist in his 
being the channel through which heaven flows 
to earth, in short, in the fulness in which an 
ecstatical state takes place in him. It is pitiful 
to be an artist, when, by forbearing to be artists, 
we might be vessels filled with the divine over- 
flowings, enriched by the circulations of omnis- 
cience and omnipresence. Are there not moments 



202 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

in the history of heaven when the human race 
was not counted by individuals, but was only 
the Influenced, was God in distribution, God 
rushing into multiform benefit? It is sublime 
to receive, sublime to love, but this lust of ini- 
parting as from ns, this desire to be loved, the 
wish to be recognized as individuals, — is finite, 
comes of a lawer strain. 

Shall I say, then, that, as far as we can trace 
the natural history of the soul, its health consists 
in the fulness of its reception, — call it piety, 
call it veneration — in the fact, that enthusiasm 
is organized therein. What is best in any work 
of art, but that part which the work itself seems 
to require and do ; that which the man cannot 
do again, that v/hich flows from the hour and 
the occasion, like the eloquence of men in a tu- 
multuous debate ? It was always the theory of 
literature, that the word of a poet was authorita- 
tive and final. He was supposed to be the mouth 
of a divine wisdom. We rather envied his cir- 
cumstance than his talent. We too could have 
gladly prophesied standing in that place. We so 
quote our Scriptures ; and the Greeks so quoted 
Homer, Theognis, Pindar, and the rest. If the 
theory has receded out of modern criticism, it is 
because we have not had poets. Whenever they 
appear, they will redeem their own credit. 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 203 

This ecstatical state seems to direct a regard 
to the whole and not to the parts ; to the cause 
and not to the ends ; to the tendency, and not 
to the act. It respects genius and not talent; 
hope, and not possession : the anticipation of all 
things by the intellect, and not the history itself; 
art, and not works of art ; poetry, and not exper- 
iment ; virtue, and not duties. 

There is no office or function of man but is 
rightly discharged by this divine method, and 
nothing that is not noxious to him if detached 
from its universal relations. Is it his work in 
the world to study nature, or the laws of the 
world ? Let him beware of proposing to himself 
any end. Is it for use ? nature is debased, as if 
one looking at the ocean can remember only the 
price of fish. Or is it for pleasure ? he is mocked : 
there is a certain infatuating air in woods and 
mountains which draws on the idler to want and 
misery. There is something social and intrusive 
in the nature of all things ; they seek to pene- 
trate and overpower, each the nature of every 
other creature, and itself alone in all modes and 
throughout space and spirit to prevail and pos- 
sess. Every star in heaven is discontented and 
insatiable. Gravitation and chemistry cannot 
content them. Ever they woo and court the 
eye of every beholder. Every man who comes 



204 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

into the world they seek to fascinate and possess 
to pass into his mind, for they desire to republish 
themselves in a more delicate world than that 
they occupy. It is not enough that they are 
Jove; Mars, Orion, and the North Star, in the 
gravitating firmament: they would have such 
poets as Newton, Herschel and Laplace, that 
they may re-exist and re-appear in the finer world 
of rational souls, and fill that realm with their 
fame. So is it with all immaterial objects. 
These beautiful basilisks set their brute, glori- 
ous eyes on the eye of every child, and, if they 
can, cause their nature to pass through his w^on- 
dering eyes into him, and so all things are mixed. 
Therefore man must be on his guard against 
this cup of enchantments, and must look at na- 
ture with a supernatural eye. By piety alone, 
by conversing with the cause of nature, is he 
safe and commands it. And because all knowl- 
edge is assimilation to the object of knowledge, 
as the power or genius of nature is ecstatic, so 
must its science or the description of it be. The 
poet must be a rhapsodist: his inspiration a sort 
of bright casualty : his will in it only the surren- 
der of will to the Universal Power, which will 
not be seen face to face, but must be received 
and sympathetically known. It is remarkable 
that we have out of the deeps of antiquity in the 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 205 

trades ascribed fo the half fabulous Zoroaster, 
a statement of this fact, which every lover and 
seeker of truth will recognize. " It is not pro- 
per," said Zoroaster, " to understand the Intelli- 
gible with vehemence, but if you incline your 
mind, you will apprehend it: not too earnestly, 
but bringing, a pure and inquiring eye. You 
will not understand it as when understanding 
some particular thing, but with the flower of the 
mind. Things divine are not attainable by mor- 
tals who understand sensual things, but only the 
light-armed arrive at the summit." 

And because ecstasy is the law and cause of 
nature, therefore you cannot interpret it in too 
high and deep a sense. Nature represents the 
best meaning of the wisest man. Does the sun- 
set landscape seem to you the place of Friend- 
ship, — those purple skies and lovely w^aters the 
amphitheatre dressed and garnished only for the 
exchange of thought and love of the purest souls? 
It is that. All other meanings which base men 
have put on it are conjectural and false. You 
cannot bathe twice in the same river, said Herac- 
litus; and I add, a man never sees the same 
object twice : with his own enlargement the 
object acquires new aspects. 

Does not the same law hold for virtue ? It is 
vitiated by too much will. He who aims at 
18 



206 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

progress, should aim at an infinite, not at a spe- 
cial benejfit. The reforms whose fame -now fills 
the land with Temperance, Anti-Slavery, Non- 
Kesistance, No Government, Equal Labor, fair 
and generous as each appears, are poor bitter 
things when prosecuted for themselves as an end. 
To every reform, in proportion to its energy, 
early disgusts are incident, so that the disciple is 
surprised at the very hour of his first triumphs, 
with chagrins, and sickness, and a general dis- 
trust: so that he shuns his associates, hates the 
enterprise which lately seemed so fair, and medi- 
tates to cast himself into the arms of that society 
and manner of life which he had newly aban- 
doned with so much pride and hope. Is it that 
he attached the value of virtue to some particular 
practices, as, the denial of certain appetites in 
certain specified indulgences, and, afterward, 
found himself still as wdcked and as far from 
happiness in that abstinence, as he had been in 
the abuse? But the soul can be appeased not by 
a deed but by a tendency. It is in a hope that 
she feels her wings. You shall love rectitude 
and not the disuse of money or the avoidance of 
trade: an unimpeded mind, and not a monkish 
diet; sympathy and usefulness, and not hoeing 
or coopering. Tell me not how great your 
project is^ the civil liberation of the world, its 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 207 

conversion into a Christian church, the estab- 
lishment of public education, cleaner diet, a new 
' division of labor and of land, laws of love for 
laws of property ; — I say to you plainly there is 
no end to which your practical faculty can aim, 
so sacred or so large, that, if pursued for itself, 
will not at last become carrion and an offence to 
the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul 
must be fed with objects immense and eternal. 
Your end should be one inapprehensible to the 
senses ; then will it be a god always approached, 
— never touched ; always giving health. A 
man adorns^ himself with prayer and love, as an 
aim adorns an action. What is strong but good- 
ness, and what is energetic but the presence of a 
brave man ? The doctrine in vegetable physi- 
ology of the presence^ or the general influence of 
any substance over and above its chemical influ- 
ence, as of an alkali or a living plant, is more 
predicable of man. You need not speak to me, 
I need not go where you are, that you should 
exert magnetism on me. Be you only whole 
and sufficient, and I shall feel you in every 
part of my life and fortune, and I can as easily 
dodge the gravitation of the globe as escape 
your influence. 

But there are other examples of this total and 
supreme influence, besides Nature and the con* 



208 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

science. ^^ From the poisonous tree, the world,'' 
say the Brahmins, "two species of fruit are pro- 
duced, sweet as the waters of life. Love or the 
society of beautiful souls, and Poetry, whose 
taste is like the immortal juice of Vishnu." What 
is Love, and why is it the chief good, but be- 
cause it is an overpowering enthusiasm? Never 
self-possessed or prudent, it is all abandonment. 
Is it not a certain adrnirable wisdom, preferable 
to all other advantages, and whereof all others 
are only secondaries and indemnities, because 
this is that in which the individual is no longer 
his own foolish master, but inhales an odorous 
and celestial air, is wrapped round with awQ of 
the object, blending for the time that object 
with the real and only good, and consults every 
omen in nature with tremulous interest. When 
we speak truly, — is not he only unhappy who is 
not in love? his fancied freedom and self-rule — 
is it not so much death ? He who is in love is 
wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every 
time he looks at the object beloved, drawing 
from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues 
which it possesses. Therefore if the object be 
not itself a living and expanding soul, he pres- 
ently exhausts it. But the love remains in his 
mind, and the wisdom it brought him; and it 
craves a new and higher object. And the reason 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 209 

why all men honor love, is because it looks up 
and not down ; aspires and not despairs. 

And what is Genius but finer love, a love 
impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection 
of thuigs, and a desire to draw a new picture or 
copy of the same ? It looks to the cause and 
life : it proceeds from within outward, whilst 
Talent goes from without inward. Talent finds 
its models, methods, and ends, in society, exists 
for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for 
power to work. Genius is its own end, and 
draws its means and the style of its architecture 
from within, going abroad only for audience, 
and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase 
to the distance and character of the ear we speak 
to. All your learning of all literatures would 
never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts 
or expressions, and yet each is natural and fami- 
liar as household words. Here about us coils 
forever the ancient enigma, so old and so unut- 
terable. Behold ! there is the sun, and the rain, 
and the rocks : the old sun, the old stones. How 
easy were it to describe all this fitly; yet no 
word can pass. Nature is a mute, and man, 
her articulate speaking brother, lo ! he also is a 
mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its speech is 
like a river ; it has no straining to describe, more 
than there is straining in nature to exist. When 
18* 



210 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

thought is best, there is most of it. Genius 
sheds wisdom like perfume, and advertises us 
that it flows out of a deeper source than the 
foregoing silence, that it knows so deeply and 
speaks so musically, because it is itself a muta- 
tion of the thing it describes. It is sun and 
moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy 
is thought and harmony in masses of matter. 

What is all history but the work of ideas, a 
record of the incomputable energy which his 
infinite aspirations infuse into man ? Has any 
thing grand and lasting been done ? Who did 
it ? Plainly not any man, but all men : it was 
the prevalence and inundation of an idea. What 
brought the pilgrims here? One man says, 
civil liberty ; another, the desire of founding a 
church ; and a third, discovers that the motive 
force was plantation and trade. But if the Puri- 
tans could rise from the dust, they could not 
answer. It is to be seen in what they were, and 
not in what they designed ; it was the growth 
and expansion of the human race, and resembled 
herein the sequent Revolution, which was not 
begun in Concord, or Lexington, or Virginia, but 
was the overflowing of the sense of natural right 
in every clear and active spirit of the period. Is 
a man boastful and knowing, and his own mas- 
ter ? — we turn from him without hope : but let 



/ 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 211 

him be filled with awe and dread before the Vast 
and the Divine, which uses him glad to be used, 
and our eye is riveted to the chain of events. 
What a debt is ours to that old religion which, 
in the childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a 
sabbath morning in the country of New England, 
teaching privation, self-denial and sorrow! A 
man was born not for prosperity, but to suffer for 
the benefit of others, like the noble rock-maple 
which all around our villages bleeds for the ser- 
vice of man. Not praise, not men's acceptance 
of our doing, but the spirit's holy errand through 
us absorbed the thought. How dignified was 
this ! How all that is called talents and success, 
in our noisy capitals, becomes buzz and din before 
this man-worthiness ! How our friendships and 
the complaisances we use, shame us now ! Shall 
we not quit our companions, as if they were 
thieves and pot-companions, and betake our- 
selves to some desert cliff of mount Katahdin, 
some unvisited recess in Moosehead Lake, to 
bewail our innocency and to recover it, and with 
it the power to communicate again with these 
sharers of a more sacred idea ? 

And what is to replace for us the piety of 
that race? We cannot have theirs: it glided 
away from us day by day, but we also can bask 
ill the great morning which rises forever out of 



212 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

the eastern sea, and be ourselves the children of 
the light. I stand here to say, Let us worship 
the mighty and transcendent Souh It is the 
office, I doubt not, of this age to annul that adul- 
terous divorce which the superstition of many 
ages has effected between the intellect andholi- 
ness. The lovers of goodness have been one 
class, the students of wisdom another, as if either 
could exist in any purity without the other. 
Truth is always holy, holiness always wise. I 
will that we keep terms with sin, and a sinful 
literature and society, no longer, but live a life of 
discovery and performance. Accept the intellect, 
and it will accept us. Be the lowly ministers of 
that pure omniscience, and deny it not before 
men. It will burn up all profane literature, all 
base current opinions, all the false powers of the 
world, as in a moment of time. I draw from 
nature the lesson of an intimate divinity. Our 
health and reason as men needs our respect to 
this fact, against the heedlessness and against the 
contradiction of society. The sanity of man 
needs the poise of this immanent force. His 
nobility needs the assurance of this inexhaustible 
reserved power. How great soever have been 
its bounties, they are a drop to the sea whence 
they flow. If you say, ^ The acceptance of the 
vision is also the act of God : ' — I shall not seek 



THE METHOD OF NATUBB. 213 

to penetrate the mystery, I admit the force of 
what you say. If you ask, ' How can any rules 
be given for the attainment of gifts so sublime ? 
I shall only remark that the solicitations of this 
spirit, as long as there is life, are never forborne. 
Tenderly, tenderly, they woo and court us from 
every object in nature, from every fact in life, 
from every thought in the mind. The one con- 
dition coupled with the gift of truth is its use. 
That man shall be learned who reduceth his 
learning to practice. Emanuel Swedenborg af- 
firmed that it was opened to him, " that the 
spirits who knew truth in this life, but did it not, 
at death shall lose their knowledge." " If knowl- 
edge," said All the Caliph, " calleth unto practice, 
well ; if not, it goeth away." The only way 
into nature is to enact our best insight. Instantly 
we are higher poets, and can speak a deeper law. 
Do what you know, and perception is converted 
into character, as islands and continents were 
built by invisible infusories, or, as these forest 
leaves absorb light, electricity, and volatile gases, 
and the gnarled oak to live a thousand years is 
the arrest and fijcation of the most volatile and 
ethereal currents. The doctrine of this Supreme 
Presence is a cry of joy and exultation. Who 
shall dare think he has come late into nature, or 
has missed anything excellent in the past, who 



214 THE METHOD OF NATURE. 

seeth the admirable stars of possibility, and the 
yet untouched continent of hope glittering with 
all its mountains in the vast West ? I praise 
with wonder this great reality, which seems to 
drown all things in the deluge of its light. What 
man seeing this, can lose it from his thoughts, 
or entertain a meaner subject ? The entrance of 
this into his mind seems to be the birth of man. 
We cannot describe the natural history of the 
soul, but we know that it is divine. I cannot 
tell if these wonderful qualities which house to- 
day in this mortal frame, shall ever re-assemble 
in equal activity in a similar frame, or whether 
they have before had a natural history like that 
of this body you see before you ; but this one 
thing I know, that these qualities did not now 
begin to exist, cannot be sick w^ith my sickness, 
nor buried in any grave ; but that they circulate 
through the Universe: before the world was, 
they were. Nothing can bar them out, or shut 
them in, but they penetrate the ocean and land, 
space and time, form and essence, and hold the 
key to universal nature. I draw from this faith 
courage and hope. All things are known to the 
soul. It is not to be surprised by any communi- 
cation. Nothing can be greater than it. Let those 
fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her 
native realm, and it is wider than space, older 



THE METHOD OF NATURE. 215 

than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillani- 
mity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn ^ 
they are not for her who putteth on her corona^ 
tion robes, and goes out through universal lova 
to universal power. 



MAN THE EEFOUMER. 

4 LECTURE REiJ) BEFORE THE MECHANICS* APPRENTICES* 
UBBABT ASSOCIATION, BOSTON, JANUARY 25, 1841. 



MAN THE REFORMER. 



Mr. President, axd Gentlemen, 

I WISH to offer to your consideration some 
thoughts on the particular and general relations 
of man as a reformer. I shall assume that the 
aim of each young man in this association is 
the very highest that belongs to a rational mind. 
Let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is 
common and mean ; that some of those offices 
and functions for which we were mainly created 
are grown so rare in society, that the memory of 
them is only kept alive in old books and in dim 
traditions ; that prophets and poets, that beauti- 
ful and perfect men, we are not now, no, nor 
have even seen such ; that some sources of hu- 
man instruction are almost unnamed and un- 
known among us ", that the community in which 
we live w^ill hardly bear to be cold that every 



220 MAN THE REFOEMER. 

man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illu- 
mination, and his daily walk elevated by inter- 
course with the spiritual world. Grant all this, 
as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors 
will deny that we ought to seek to establish 
ourselves in such disciplines and courses as will 
deserve that guidance and clearer communica- 
tion with the spiritual nature. And further, I 
will not dissemble my hope, that each person 
whom I address has felt his Own call to cast 
aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, 
and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a 
reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip along 
through the world like a footman or a spy, 
escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as 
many knocks as he can, but a brave and up- 
right man, who must find or cut a straight 
road to everything excellent in the earth, and 
not only go honorably himself, but make it 
easier for all who follow him, to go in honor 
and with benefit. 

In the history of the world the doctrine of 
Reform had never such scope as at the present 
hour. Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits, Monks, 
Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, 
in their accusations of society, all respected 
something, — church or state, literature or his- 
tory, domestic usages, the market town, the 



MAN THE REFORMER. 221 

dinner table, coined money. But now all these 
and all things else hear' the trumpet, and must 
rush to judgment, — Christianity, the laws, com- 
merce, schools, the farm, the laboratory ; and not 
a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, or 
woman, but is threatened by the new spirit. 

What if some of the objections whereby 
our institutions are assailed are extreme and 
speculative, and the reformers tend to ideal- 
ism; that only shows the extravagance of the 
abuses which have driven the mind into the 
opposite extreme. It is when your facts and 
persons grow unreal and fantastic by too much 
falsehood, that the scholar flies for refuge to the 
world of ideas, and aims to recruit and replenish 
nature from that source. Let ideas establish 
their legitimate sway again in society, let life be 
fair and poetic, and the scholars will gladly be 
lovers, citizens, and philanthropists. 

It will afford no security from the new ideas, 
that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the 
property and institutions of a hundred cities, 
are built on other foundations. . The demon of 
reform has a' secret door into the heart of every 
lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every citv^ 
The fact, that a new thought and hope have 
dawned in your breasts, should apprize you that 
in the same hour a new light broke in upon a 
19* 



222 MAN THE REFORMER. 

thousand private hearts. That secret which yc\i 
would fain keep, — as soon as you go abroad, lo ! 
there is one standing on the doorstep, to tell you 
the same. There is not the most bronzed and 
sharpened money-catcher, who does not, to your 
consternation, almost, quail and shake the mo- 
ment he hears a question prompted by the new 
ideas. We thought he had some semblance of 
ground to stand upon, that such as he at least 
would die hard ; but he trembles and flees. Then 
the scholar says, ' Cities and coaches shall never 
impose on me again ; for, behold every solitary 
dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That 
fancy I had, and hesitated to utter because you 
would laugh, — the broker, the attorney, the 
market-man are saying the same thing. Had I 
waited a day longer to speak, I had been too 
late. Behold, State Street thinks, and Wall 
Street doubts, and begins to prophecy ! ' 

It cannot be wondered at, that this general 
inquest into abuses should arise in the bosom of 
society, when one considers the practical impedi- 
ments that stand in the way of virtuous young 
men. The young man, on entering life, finds 
the way to lucrative employments blocked Avith 
abuses. The ways of trade are grown selfish to 
the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if 
not beyond the borders) of fraud. The employ- 



MAN THE REFORMER. 223 

merits of commerce are not intrinsically unfit for 
a man, or less genial to his faculties, but these 
are now in their general course so vitiated by 
derelictions and abuses at which all connive, 
that it requnes more vigor and resources than 
can be expected of every young man, to right 
himself in them ; he is lost in them ; he cannot 
move hand or foot in them. Has he genius and 
virtue ? the less does he find them fit for him 
to grow in, and if he would thrive in them, he 
must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood 
and youth as dreams ; he must forget the pray- 
ers of his childhood ; and must take on him the 
harness of routine and obsequiousness. If not 
so minded, nothing is left him but to begin the 
world anew, as he does who puts the spade into 
the ground for food. We are all implicated, of 
course, in this charge ; it is only necessary to 
ask a few questions as to the progress of the 
articles of commerce from the fields where they 
grew, to our houses, to become aware that we 
eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a 
hundred commodities. How many articles of 
daily consumption are furnished us from the 
West Indies ; yet it is said, that, in the Spanish 
islands, the venality of the officers of the gov- 
ernment has passed into usage, and that no arti- 
cle passes into our ships which has not been 



224 MAN THE REFORMER. 

fraudulently cheapened. In the Spanish islands, 
every agent or factor of the Americans, unless 
he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Cath- 
olic, or has caused a priest to make that declara- 
tion for him. The abolitionist has shown us 
our dreadful debt to the southern negro. In 
the island of Cuba, in addition to the ordinary 
abominations of slavery, it appears, only men 
are bought for the plantations, and one dies in ten 
every year, of these miserable bachelors, to yield 
us sugar. I leave for those who have the knowl- 
edge the part of sifting the oaths of our custom- 
houses ; I will not inquire into the oppression of 
the sailors ; I will not pry into the usages of our 
retail trade. I content myself with the fact, 
that the general system of our trade, (apart from 
the blacker traits, which, I hope, are exceptions 
denounced and unshared by all reputable men,) 
is a system of selfishness ; is not dictated by the 
high sentiments of human nature ; is not mea- 
sured by the exact law of reciprocity ; much less 
by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is a 
system of distrust, of concealment, of superior 
keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage. 
It is not that which a man delights to unlock 
to a noble friend ; which he meditates on with 
joy and self-approval in his hour of love and 
aspiration ; but rather what he then puts out of 



MAN THE REFORMER. 225 

Bight, only showing the brilliant result, and 
atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the man- 
ner of expending it. I do not charge the mer- 
chant or the manufacturer. The sins of our 
trade belong to no class, to no individual. One 
plucks, one distributes, one eats. Every body 
partakes, every body confesses, — with cap and 
knee volunteers his confession, yet none feels 
himself accountable. He did not create the 
abuse ; he cannot alter it. "What is he ? an ob- 
scure private person who must get his bread. 
That is the vice, — that no one feels himself 
called to act for man, but only as a fraction of 
man. It happens therefore that all such ingen- 
uous souls as feel within themselves the irrepres- 
sible strivings of a noble aim, who by the law 
of their nature must act simply, find these ways 
of trade unfit for them, and they come forth 
from it. Such cases are becoming more numer- 
ous every year. 

But by coming out of trade you have not 
cleared yourself. The trail of the serpent 
reaches into all the lucrative professions and 
practices of man. Each has it own wrongs. 
Each finds a tender and very intelligent con- 
science a disqualification for success. Each 
requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of 
the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, 



22G MAN THE REFORMER. 

an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from 
the sentiments of generosity and love, a com- 
promise of private opinion and lofty integrity. 
Nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole in- 
stitution of property, until our laws which estab- 
lish and protect it, seem not to be the issue of love 
and reason, but of selfishness. Suppose a man 
is so unhappy as to be born a saint, with, keen 
perceptions, but with the conscience and love of 
an angel, and he is to get his living in the world ; 
he finds himself excluded from all lucrative 
works ; he has no farm, and he cannot get one ; 
for, to earn money enough to buy one, requires 
a sort of concentration toward money, which is 
the selling himself for a number of years, and to 
him the present hour is as sacred and inviolable 
''as any future hour. Of course, whilst another 
man has no land, my title to mine, your title to 
yours, is at once vitiated. Liextricable seem to 
be the twinings and tendrils of this evil, and we 
all involve ourselves in it the deeper by forming 
connections, by wives and children, by benefits 
and debts. 

Considerations of this kind have turned the 
attention of many philanthropic and intelligent 
persons to the claims of manual labor, as a part 
of the education of every young man. If the 
accumulated wealth of the past generation is 



MAN THE REFORMER. 227 

thus tainted, — no matter how much of it is 
offered to us, — we must begin to consider if it 
were not the nobler part to renounce it, and 
to put ourselves into primary relations with the 
soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is 
dishonest an'd unclean, to take each of us bravely 
his part, with his own hands, in the manual 
labor of the world. 

But it is said, ' What ! will you give up the 
immense advantages reaped from the division of 
labor, and set every man to make his own shoes, 
bureau, knife, wagon, sails, and needle ? This 
would be to put men back into barbarism by 
•their own act.' I see no instant prospect of a 
virtuous revolution ; yet I confess, I should not 
be pained at a change which threatened a loss of 
some of the luxuries or conveniences of society, 
if it proceeded from a preference of the agricul- 
tural life out of the belief, that our primary 
duties as men could be better discharged in that 
calling. Who could regret to see a high con- 
science and a purer taste exercising a sensible 
effect on young men in their choice of occupa- 
tion, and thinning the ranks of competition in 
the labors of commerce, of law, and of state ? 
It is easy to see that the inconvenience would 
last but a short .time. This would be great 
action, which always opens the eyes of men 



228 MAN THE REFORMER. 

"When many persons shall have done this, when 
the majority shall admit the necessity of reform 
in all these institutions, their abuses will be 
redressed, and the way will be open again to the 
advantages which arise from the division of 
labor, and a man may select the fittest employ- 
ment for his peculiar talent again, without com- 
promise. 

But quite apart from the emphasis which the 
times give to the doctrine, that the manual labor 
of society ought to be shared among all the 
members, there are reasons proper to every indi- 
vidual, why he should not be deprived of it. 
The use of manual labor is one which never 
grows obsolete, and which is inapplicable to no 
person. A man should have a farm or a mechan- 
ical craft for his culture. We must have a basis 
for our higher accomplishments, our delicate 
entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the 
work of our hands. We must have an antag- 
onism in the tough world for all the variety of 
our spiritual faculties, or they will not be born. 
Manual labor is the study of the external world. 
The advantage of riches remains with him who 
procured them, not with the heir. When I go 
into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I 
feel such an exhileration and health, that I dis- 
cover that I have been defrauding myself all this 



MAN THE REFORMER. 229 

time in letting others do for me what I should 
have done with my own hands. But not only- 
health, but education is in the work. Is it pos- 
sible that I who get indefinite quantities of 
sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery ware, 
and letter paper, by simply signing my name 
once in three months to a cheque in favor of 
John Smith and Co. traders, get the fair share of 
exercise to my faculties by that act, which na- 
ture intended for me in making all these far- 
fetched matters important to my comfort ? It is 
Smith himself, and his carriers, and dealers, and 
manufacturers ; it is the sailor, the hidedrogher, 
the butcher, the negro, the hunter, and the 
planter, who have intercepted the sugar of the 
sugar, and the cotton of the cotton. They have 
got the education, I only the commodity. This 
were all very well if I were necessarily absent, 
being detained by work of my own, like theirs, 
work of the same faculties ; then should I be 
sure of my hands and feet, but now I feel some 
shame before my wood-chopper, my ploughman, 
and my cook, for they have some sort of self- 
sufficiency^ they can contrive without my aid to 
bring the day and year round, but I depend on 
them, and have not earned by use a right to my 
arms and feet. 

Consider further the difference between the 
20 



230 MAN THE REraHMER. 

first and second owner of property. Every 
species of property is preyed on by its own ene- 
mies, as iron by rust ; timber by rot ; cloth by 
moths ; provisions by mould, putridity, or ver- 
min ; money by thieves ; an orchard by insects ; 
a planted field by weeds and the inroad of cat- 
tle ; a stock of cattle by hunger ; a road by rain 
and frost ; a bridge by freshets. And whoever 
fakes any of these things into his possession, 
takes the charge of defending them from this 
troop of enemies, or of keeping them in repair. 
A man who supplies his own want, who builds 
a raft or a boat to go a fishing, finds it easy to 
caulk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rud- 
der. What he gets only as fast as he wants for 
his own ends, does not embarrass him, or take 
away his sleep with looking after. But when he 
comes to give all the goods he has year after 
year collected, in one estate to his son, — house, 
orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hard- 
ware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provisions, 
books, money, — and cannot give him the skill 
and experience which made or collected these, 
and the method and place they have in his own 
life, the son finds his hands full, — not to use these 
things, — but to look after them and defend them 
from their natural enemies. To him they are 
not means, but masters. Their enemies will not 



MAN THE KEFORMER. 231 

remit ; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, freshet, 
fire, all seize their own, fill him with vexation, 
and he is converted from the owner into a watch- 
man or a watch-dog to this magazine of old and 
new chattels. What a change ! Instead of the 
masterly good humor, and sense of power, and 
fertility of resource in himself; instead of those 
strong and learned hands, those piercing and 
learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty 
and prevailing heart, which the father had, whom 
nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, 
water and land, beast and fish seemed all to 
know and to serve, we have now a puny, pro- 
tected person, guarded by walls and curtains, 
stoves and down beds, coaches, and men ser- 
vants and women-servants from the earth and 
the sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is 
made anxious by all that endangers those pos- 
sessions, and is forced to spend so much time in 
guarding thetn, that he has quite lost sight of 
their original use, namely, to help him to his 
ends, — to the prosecution of his love; to the 
helping of his friend, to the worship of his 
God, to the enlargement of his knowledge, to 
the serving of his country, to the indulgence 
of his sentiment, and he is now what is called 
a rich man, — the menial and runner of his 
riches. 



232 MAN THE REFORMER. 

Hence it happens that the whole interest of 
history lies in the fortunes of the poor. Know- 
ledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man 
over his necessities, his march to the dominion 
of the world. Every man ought to have this 
opportunity to conquer the world for himself. 
Only such persons interest us, Spartans, Romans, 
Saracens, English, Americans, who have stood 
in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit 
and might extricated themselves, and made man 
victorious. 

I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of 
labor, or insist that every man should be a far- 
mer, any more than that every man should be a 
lexicographer. In general, one may say, that the 
husbandman's is the oldest, and most univer- 
sal profession, and that where a man does not 
yet discover in himself any fitness for one work 
more than another, this may be preferred. But 
the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that 
every man ought to stand in primary relations 
with the work of the world, ought to do it him- 
self, and not to suffer the accident of his having 
a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to 
some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever 
him from those duties ; and for this reason, that 
labor is God's education ; that he only is a sin- 
cere learner, he only can become a master, who 



MAN THE REFORMER. 233 

earns the secrets of labor, and who by real cun- 
ning extorts from nature its sceptre. 

Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of 
the learned professions, of the poet, the priest, 
the lawgiver, and men of study generally; 
namely, that in the experience of all men of 
that class, the amount of manual labor which is 
necessary to the maintenance of a family, indis- 
poses and disqualifies for intellectual exertion. 
I know, it often, perhaps usually, happens, that 
where there is a fine organization apt for poetry 
and philosophy, that individual finds himself 
compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste 
several days that he may enhance and glorify 
one ; and is better taught by a moderate and 
dainty exercise, such as rambling in the fields, 
rowing, skating, hunting, than by the downright 
drudgery of the farmer and the smith. I would 
not quite forget the venerable counsel of the 
Egyptian mysteries, which declared that " there 
were two pairs of eyes in man, and it is requi- 
site that the pair which are beneath should 
be closed, when the pair that are above them 
perceive, and that when the pair above are 
closed, those which are beneath should be open- 
ed.'* Yet I will suggest that no separation from 
labor can be without some loss of power and of 
truth to the seer himself ; that, I doubt not, the 
20* 



234 MAN THE RErORMER. 

faults and vices of our literature and philosophy, 
their too great fineness, effeminacy, and melan- 
choly, are attributable to the enervated and 
sickly habits of the literary class. Better that 
the book should not be quite so good, and the 
bookmaker abler and better, and not himself 
often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has 
written. 

But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, 
some relaxation must be had, I think, that if a 
man find in himself any strong bias to poetry, to 
art, to the contemplative life, drawing him to 
these things with a devotion incompatible with 
good husbandry, that man ought to reckon early 
with himself, and, respecting the compensations 
of the Universe, ought to ransom himself from 
the duties of economy, by a certain rigor and 
privation in his habits. For privileges so rare 
and grand, let him not stint to pay a great tax. 
Let him be a caenobite, a paliper, and if need be, 
celibate also. Let him learn to eat his meals 
standing, and to relish the taste of fair water 
and black bread. He may leave to others the 
costly conveniences of housekeeping, and large 
hospitality, and the possession of works of art. 
Let him feel that genius is a hospitality, and 
that he who can create works of art needs not 
collect them. He must live in a chamber, and 



MAN THE REFORMER. 235 

postpone his self-indulgence, forewarned and 
forearmed against that frequent misfortune of 
men of genius, — the taste for luxury. This is 
the tragedy of genius, — attempting to drive 
along the ecliptic with one horse of the heavens 
and one horse of the earth, there is only dis- 
cord and ruin and downfall to chariot and char- 
ioteer. 

The duty that every man should assume his 
own vows, should call the institutions of society 
to account, and examine their fitness to him, 
gains in emphasis, if we look at our modes of 
living. Is our housekeeping sacred and honor- 
able? Does it raise and inspire us, or does it 
cripple us instead ? I ought to be armed by 
every part and function of my household, by all 
my social function, by my economy, by my 
feasting, by my voting, by my traffic. Yet 
I am almost no party to any of these things. 
Custom does it for me, gives me no power there- 
from, and runs me in debt to boot. We spend 
our incomes for paint and paper, for a hundred 
trifles, I know not what, and not for the things 
of a man. Our expense is almost all for con- 
formity. It is for cake that we run in debt ; 
H is not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, > 
not worship, that costs so much. Why needs 
f>ny man be rich ? Why must he have horses, 



236 MAN THE REFORMER. 

fine garments, handsome apartments, access to 
public houses and places of amusement ? Only 
-for want of thousrht. Give his mind a new 
image, and he flees into a solitary garden or 
garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, 
than the fee of a county could make him. But 
we are first thoughtless, and then find that we 
are moneyless. We are first sensual, and then 
must be rich. We dare not trust our wit for 
making our house pleasant to our friend, and 
so we buy ice-creams. He is accustomed to 
carpets, and we have not sufficient character to 
put floor cloths out of his mind whilst he stays 
in the house, and so we pile the floor with 
carpets. Let the house rather be a temple of 
the Furies of Lacedsemon, formidable and holy 
to all, which none but a Spartan may enter 
or so much as behold. As soon as there is 
faith, as soon as there is society, comfits and 
cushions will be left to slaves. Expense will be 
inventive and heroic. We shall eat hard and lie 
hard, we shall dwell like the ancient Romans in 
narrow tenements, whilst our public edifices, 
like theirs, will be worthy for their proportion of 
the landscape in which we set them, for conver- 
sation, for art, for music, for worship. We shall 
be ri(*.h to great purposes; poor only for selfish 
ones. 



MAN THE REFORMER. 237 

Now what help for these evils ? How can the 
man who has learned but one art, procure all the 
conveniences of life honestly ? Shall we say 
all we think ? — Perhaps with his own hands. 
Suppose he collects or makes them ill; — yet he 
has learned their lesson. If he cannot do that. — 
Then perhaps he can go without. Immense 
wisdom and riches are in that. It is better to go 
without, than to have them at too great a cost. 
Let us learn the meaning of economy. Econ- 
omy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when 
its aim is grand ; when it is the prudence of 
simple tastes, when it is practised for freedom, or 
love, or devotion. Much of the economy which 
we see in houses, is of a base origin, and is best 
kept out of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day 
that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on 
Sunday, is a baseness ; but parched corn and a 
house with one apartment, that I may be free of 
all perturbations, that I may be serene and docile 
to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road- 
ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or 
goodwill, is frugality for gods and heroes. 

Can we not learn the lesson of self-help ? 
Society is full of infirm people, who incessantly 
summon others to serve them. They contrive 
everywhere to exhaust for their single comfort 
the entire means and appliances of that luxury 



238 MAN THE REFORMER. 

to which our invention has yet attained. Sofas, 
ottomans, stoves, wine, game-fowl, spices, oer- 
fumes, rides, the theatre, entertainments, — all 
these they want, they need, and whatever can 
be suggested more than these, they crave also, 
as if it was the bread which should keep them 
from starving ; and if they miss any one, they 
represent themselves as the most wronged and 
most wretched persons on earth. One must have 
been born and bred with them to know how to 
prepare a meal for their learned stomach. Mean- 
time, they never bestir themselves to serve 
another person ; not they ! they have a great 
deal more to do for themselves than they can 
possibly perform, nor do they once perceive the 
cruel joke of their lives, but the more odious 
they grow, the sharper is the tone of their com- 
plaining and craving. Can anything be so ele- 
gant as to have few wants and to serve them 
one's self, so as to have somewhat left to give, 
instead of being always prompt to grab ? It is 
more elegant to answer one's own needs, than to 
be richly served; inelegant perhaps it may look 
to-day, and to a few, but it is an elegance for- 
ever and to all. 

I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in 
reform. I do not wish to push my criticism on 
the state of things around me to that extravagant 



MAN THE REFORMER. 239 

mark, that shall compel me to suicide, or to an 
absolute isolation from the advantages of civil 
society. If we suddenly plant our foot, and 
sav, — I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor 
touch any food or fabric which I do not know 
to be innocent, or deal with any person whose 
whole manner of life is not clear and rational, 
we shall stand still. Whose is so ? Not mine ; 
not thine ; not his. But I think we must clear 
ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether 
we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty 
contribution of our energies to the common 
benefit ? and we must not cease to tend, to the 
correction of flagrant wrongs, by laying one 
stone aright every day. 

But the idea which now begins to agitate 
society has a wider scope than om* daily employ- 
ments, our households, and the institutions of 
property. We are ta revise the whole of our 
social structure, the state, the school, religion, 
marriage, trade, science, and explore their foun- 
dations in our own nature ; we are to see that 
the world not only fitted the former men, but fit^ 
us, and to clear ourselves of every usage which 
has not its roots in our own mind. What is a 
man born for but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker 
of what man has made ; a renouncer of lies ; a 
restorer of truth and good, imitating that great 



240 MAN THE REFORMER. 

Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps 
no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs 
herself, yielding us every morning a new day, 
and with every pulsation a new life? J^ei him 
renounce everything which is not true to him, 
and put all his practices back on their first 
thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not 
the whole world for his reason. If there are in- 
conveniences, and what is called ruin in the way, 
because we have so enervated and maimed our- 
selves, yet it would be like dying of perfumes to 
sink in the effort to re -attach the deeds of every 
day to the holy and mysterious recesses of life. 

The power, which is at once spring and regu- 
lator in all efforts of reform, is the conviction 
that there is an infinite worthiness in man 
which will appear at the call of worth, and that 
all particular reforms are the removing of some 
impediment. Is it not the highest duty that 
man should be honored in us ? I ought not to 
allow any man, because he has broad lands, to 
feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to 
make him feel that I can do without his riches, 
that I cannot be bought, — neither by comfort, 
neither by pride, — and though I be utterly pen- 
niless, and receiving bread from him, that he is 
the poor man beside me. And if, at the same 
time, a woman or a child discovers a sentiment 



MAN THE REFORMER. 241 

of piety, or a juster way of thinking than mine, 
T ought to confess it by my respect and obedi- 
ence, though it go to alter my whole way of 
Ufe. 

The Americans have many virtues, but they 
have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words 
whose meaning is more lost sight of. We use 
these words as if they were as obsolete as Selah 
and Amen. And yet they have the broadest 
meaning, and the most cogent application to Bos- 
ton in this year. The Americans have little faith. 
They rely on the power of a dollar; they are 
deaf to a sentiment. They think you may talk 
the north wind down as easily as raise society; 
and no class more faithless than the scholars or 
intellectual men. Now if I talk with a sincere 
wise man, and my friend, with a poet, with a 
conscientious youth who is still under the do- 
minion of his own wild thoughts, and not yet 
harnessed in the team of society to drag with us 
all in the ruts of custom, I see at once how 
paltry is all this generation of unbelievers, and 
what a house of cards their institutions are, and I 
see what one brave man, what one great thought 
executed might effect. I see that the reason of 
the distrust of the practical man in aU theory, is 
his inability to perceive the means whereby we 
work. Look, he says, at the tools with which 
21 



242 MAN THE REFOPvMER. 

this world of yours is to be built. As we can- 
not make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and 
forests, by means of the best carpenters' or en» 
gineers' tools, with chemist's laboratory and 
smith's forge to boot, — so neither can we ever 
construct that heavenly society you prate of, out 
of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as 
we know them to be. But the believer not only 
beholds his heaven to be possible, but already 
to begin to exist, — not by the men or materi- 
als the statesman uses, but by men transfigured 
and raised above themselves by the power of 
principles. To principles something else is pos- 
sible that transcends all the power of expedi- 
ents. 

Every great and commanding moment in the 
annals of the world is the triumph of some 
enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs after 
Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small 
and mean beginning, established a larger empire 
than that of Rome, is an example. They did 
they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed 
on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop 
of Roman cavalry. The women fought like 
men, and conquered the Roman men. They 
were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They 
were Temperance troops. There was neither 
brandy nor flesh needed to feed them. They 



MAN THE REFORMER. 243 

conquered Asia, and Africa, and Spain, on bar- 
xey. The Caliph Omar's wallving-stick struck 
more terror into those who saw it, than anothel 
man's sword. His diet was barley bread; his, 
sauce was salt ; and oftentimes by way of absti- 
nence he ate his bread without salt. His drink 
was water. His palace was built of mud ; and 
wlien he left Medina to go to the conquest of 
Jerusalem, he rode on a red camel, with a wood- 
en platter hanging at his saddle, with a bottle of 
water and two sacks, one holding barley, and 
the other dried fruits. 

But there will dawn ere long on our politics, 
on our modes of living, a nobler morning than 
that Arabian faith, in the sentiment of love. 
This is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea 
of nature. We must be lovers, and at once the 
impossible becomes possible. Our age and his- 
tory, for these thousand years, has not been the 
history of kindness, but of selfishness. Our dis- 
trust is very expensive. The money we spend 
for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We 
make, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and in- 
cendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him 
so. An acceptance of the sentiment of love 
throughout Christendom for a ^season, would 
bring the felon and the outcast to our side in 
tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our 



244 MAN THE REFORMER. 

service. See this wide society of laboring men 
and women. We allow ourselves to be served 
by them, we live apart from them, and meet 
them without a salute in the streets. We do not 
greet their talents, nor rejoice in their good for- 
tune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the assembly 
of the people vote for what is dear to them. 
Thus we enact the part of the selfish noble and 
king from the foundation of the world. See, 
this tree always bears one fruit. In every house- 
hold, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the 
malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of do- 
mestics. Let any two matrons meet, and ob- 
serve how soon their conversation turns on the 
troubles from their " AeZj9," as our phrase is. In 
every knot of laborers, the rich man does not 
feel himself among his friends, — and .at the polls 
he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct op- 
position to him. We complain that the politics 
of masses of the people are controlled by de- 
signing men, and led in opposition to manifest 
justice and the common weal, and to their own 
interest. But the people do not wish to be re- 
presented or ruled by the ignorant and base. 
They only vote for these, because they were 
asked with the voice and semblance of kind* 
ness. They will not vote for them long. They 
inevitably prefer wit and probity. To use an 



MAN THE REFORMEE. 21S 

Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any 
long time " to raise the nails of wild beasts, and 
to depress the heads of the sacred birds." Let 
our affection flow out to our fellows ; it would 
operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions. 
It is better to work on institutions by the sun 
than by the wind. The state must consider the 
poor man, and all voices must speak for him. 
Every child that is born must have a just chance 
for his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws 
of property proceed from the concession of the 
rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us 
begin by habitual imparting. Let us understand 
that the equitable rule is, that no one should 
take more than his share, let him be ever so rich. 
Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see 
to it that the world is the better for me, and to 
find my reward in the act. Love would put a 
new face on this weary old world in which we 
dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and it 
would warm the heart to see how fast the vain 
diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies, 
and navies, and lines of defence, would be super- 
seded by this unarmed child. Love will creep 
where it cannot go, will accomplish that by im- 
perceptible methods, — being its own lever, ful- 
crum, and power, — which force could never 
achieve. Have vou not seen in the woods, in a 
21* 



24o MAN THE REIFORMER. 

late autumn morning, a poor fungus or mush- 
room, — a plant without any solidity, nay, that 
seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, — by 
its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle push- 
ing, manage to break its way up through the 
frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust 
on its head ? It is the symbol of the power of 
kindness. The virtue of this principl*^ in human 
society in application to great interests is obso- 
lete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it 
has been tried in illustrious instances, with sig- 
nal success. This great, overgrown, dead Chris- 
tendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name 
of a lover of mankind. But one day all men 
will be lovers ; and every calamity will be dis- 
solved in the universal sunshine. 

Will you suffer me to add one trait more to 
this portrait of man the reformer ? The media- 
tor between the spiritual and the actual world 
should have a great prospective prudence. An 
Arabian poet describes his hero by saying, 

" Sunshine was he 
In the winter day ; 
And in the midsummer 
Coolness aixi shade." 

He who would help himself and others, should 
not be a subject of irregular and interrupted 
impulses of virtue, but a continent, persisting, 



MAN THE REFORMER. 247 

immovable person, — such as we have seen a 
few scattered up and down in time for the bless- 
ing of the world ; men who have in the gravity 
of their nature a quality which answers to the 
fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the motion 
equably over all the wheels, and hinders it from 
falling unequally and suddenly in destructive 
shocks. It is better that joy should be spread 
over all the day in the form of strength, than 
that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, full 
of danger and followed by reactions. There is 
a sublime prudence, which is the very highest 
that we know of man, which, believing in a 
vast future, — sure of more to come than is yet 
seen, — postpones always the present hour to 
the whole life ; postpones talent to genius, and 
special results to character. As the merchant 
gladly takes money from his income to add to 
his capital, so is the great man very willing 
to lose particular powers and talents, so that he 
gain in the elevation of his life. The open- 
ing of the spiritual senses disposes men ever to 
greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, 
their best means and skill of procuring a present 
success, their power and their fame, — to cast all 
things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine 
communications. A purer fame, a greater power 
rewards the sacrifice. It is the conversion of 



248 MAN THE BEFORMER. 

our harvest into seed. As the farmer casts into 
the ground the finest ears of his grain, the 
time will come when we too shall hold nothing 
back, but shall eagerly convert more than we 
now possess into means and powers, when we 
shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon 
for seeds. 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

IE AD JLT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, DECEMBER 2, 1841 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 



The Times, as we say — or the present abpects 
of our social state, the Laws, Divinity, Natural 
Science, Agriculture, Art, Trade, Letters, have 
their root in an invisible spiritual reality. To 
appear in these aspects, they must first exist, or 
have some necessary foundation. Beside all the 
small reasons we assign, there is a great reason 
for the existence of every extant fact ; a reason 
which lies grand and immovable, often unsus- 
pected behind it in silence. The Times are the 
masquerade of the eternities ; trivial to the dull, 
tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise ; 
the receptacle in which the Past leaves its his- 
tory ; the quarry out of which the genius of 
to-day is building up the Future. The Times — 
the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, 
are to be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, 
whereon a weighty sense is inscribed, if we 



252 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

have the wit and the love to search it out. Na- 
ture itself seems to propound to us this topic, 
and to invite us to explore the meaning of the 
conspicuous facts of the day. Everything that 
is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention 
of the philosopher: and this for the obvious 
reason, that although it may not be of ^ any 
worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people. 

Here is very good matter to be handled, if W6 
are skilful ; an abundance of important practical 
questions which it behoves us to understand. 
Let us examine the pretensions of the attacking 
and defending parties. Here is this great fact 
of Conservatism, entrenched in its immense re- 
doubts, with Himmaleh for its front, and Atlas 
for its flank, and Andes for its rear, and the At- 
lantic and Pacific seas for its ditches and trenches, 
which has planted its crosses, and crescents, and 
stars and stripes, and various signs and badges 
of possession, over every rood of the planet, and 
says, ^I will hold fast; and to whom I will, 
will I give ; and whom I will, will I exclude 
and starve : ' so says Conservatism ; and all the 
children of men attack the colossus in their 
youth, and all, or all but a few, bow before it 
when they are old. A necessity not yet com- 
manded, a negative imposed on the will of man 
by his condition, a deficiency in his force, is tho 



LECTUEE ON THE TIMES. 253 

foundation on which it rests. Let this side be 
fairly stated. Meantime, on the other part, 
arises Reform, and offers the sentiment of Love 
as an overmatch to this material might. I wish 
to consider well this affirmative side, which has 
a loftier port and reason than heretofore, which 
encroaches on the other every day, puts it out 
of countenance, out of reason, and out of temper, 
and leaves it nothing but silence and possession. 

The fact of aristocracy, with its, two weapons 
of wealth and manners, is as commanding a fea- 
ture of the nineteenth century, and the American 
republic, as of old Rome, or modern England. 
The reason and influence of wealth, the aspect 
of philosophy and religion, and the tendencies 
which have acquired the name of Transcend- 
entalism in Old and New England ; the aspect of 
poetry, as the exponent and interpretation of 
these things; the fuller development and the 
freer play of Character as a social and political 
agent ; — these and other related topics will in 
turn come to be considered. 

But the subject of the Times is not an abstract 
question. We talk of the world, but we mean 
a few men and women. If you speak of the 
age, you mean your own platoon of people, as 
Dante and Milton painted in colossal their pla- 
toons, and called them Heaven and Hell. Li 

22 



254 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

our idea of progress, we do not go out of thia 
personal picture. We do not think the sky will 
be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our climate more 
temperate, but only that our relation to our fel- 
lows will be simpler and happier. What is the 
reason to be given for this extreme attraction 
which persons have for us, but that they are the 
Age ? they are the results of the Past ; they are 
the heralds of the Future. They indicate, — 
these witty, suffering, blushing, intimidating 
figures of the only race in which there are indi- 
viduals or changes, how far on the Fate has 
gone, and what it drives at. As trees make 
scenery, and constitute the hospitality of the 
landscape, so persons are the world to persons. 
A cunning mystery by which the Great Desart 
of thoughts and of planets takes this engaging 
form, to bring, as it would seem, its meanings 
nearer to the mind. Thoughts walk and speak, 
and look with eyes at me, and transport me into 
new and magnificent scenes. These are the 
pungent instructors who thrill the heart of each 
of us, and make all other teaching formal and 
cold. How I follow them with aching heart, 
with pining desire ! I count myself nothing 
before them. I would die for them with joy. 
They can do what they will with me. How 
they lash us with those tongues! How they 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 255 

make the tears start, make us blush and turn 
pale, and lap us in Elysium to soothing dreams, 
and castles m the air ! By tones of triumph ; 
of dear love ; by threats ; by pride that freezes ; 
these have the skill to make the world look 
bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of 
tenderness and joy. I do not wonder at the 
miracles which poetry attributes to the music 
of Orpheus, when I remember what I have ex- 
perienced from the varied notes of the human 
voice. They are an incalculable energy which 
countervails all other forces in nature, because 
they are the channel of supernatural powers. 
There is no interest or institution so poor and 
withered, but if a new strong man could be born 
into it, he would immediately redeem and replace 
it. A personal ascendency, — that is the only 
fact much worth considering. I remember, some 
years ago, somebody shocked a circle of friends 
of order here in Boston, who supposed that our 
people were identified with their religious de- 
nominations, by declaring that an eloquent man, 
— let him be of what sect soever, — would be 
ordained at once in one of our metropolitan 
churches. To be sure he would ; and not only 
in ours, but in any church, mosque, or temple, 
on the planet ; but he must be eloquent, able to 
supplant our method and classification, by the 



256 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

superior beauty of his own. Every fact we have 
was brought here by some person ; and there is 
none that will not change and pass away before 
a person whose nature is broader than the per- 
son which the fact in question represents. And 
so I find the Age walking about in happy and 
hopeful natures, in strong eyes, and pleasant 
thoughts, and think I read it nearer and truer so, 
than in the statute-book, or in the investments 
of capital, which rather celebrate with mournful 
music the obsequies of the last age. In the brain 
of a fanatic ; in the wild hope of a mountain 
boy, called by city boys very ignorant, because 
they do not know what his hope has certainly 
apprised him shall be ; in the love-glance of a 
girl ; in the hair-splitting conscientiousness of 
some eccentric person, who has found some new 
scruple to embarrass himself and his neighbors 
withal ; is to be found that which shall consti- 
tute the times to come, more than in the now 
organized and accredited oracles. For, whatever 
is aflSrmative and now advancing, contains it 
I think that only is real, which men love and 
rejoice in ; not what they tolerate, but what they 
choose ; what they embrace and avow, and not 
the things which chill, benumb, and terrify 
them. 

And so why not draw for these times a portrait 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 257 

gallery ? Let us paint the painters. "Whilst the 
Daguerreotypist, with camera-obscura and silver 
plate, begins now to traverse the land, let us set 
up our Camera also, and let the sun paint the 
people. Let us paint the agitator, and the man 
of the old school, and the member of Congress, 
and the college-professor, the formidable editor, 
the priest, and reformer, the contemplative girl, 
and the fair aspirant for fashion and opportuni- 
ties, the woman of the world who has tried and 
knows ; — let us examine how well she knows. 
Could we indicate the indicators, indicate those 
who most accurately represent every good and 
evil tendency of the general mind, in the just 
order which they take on this canvass of Time ; 
so that all witnesses should recognise a spiritual 
law, as each well known form flitted for a mo- 
ment across the wall, we should have a series of 
sketches which would report to the next ages the 
color and quality of ours. 

Certainly, I think, if this were done, there 
would be much to admire as well as to con- 
demn ; souls of as lofty a port, as any in Greek 
or Roman fame, might appear; men of great 
heart, of strong hand, and of persuasive speech ; 
subtle thinkers, and men of wide sympathy, and 
an apprehension which looks over all history, and 
everywhere recognises its own. To be sure, there 
22* 



258 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

will be fragments and hints of men, more than 
enough : bloated promises, which end in noth- 
ing or little. And then truly great men, but 
with some defect in their composition, which 
neutralizes their whole force. Here is a Da- 
mascus blade, such as you may search through 
nature in vain to parallel, laid up on the shelf in 
some village to rust and ruin. And how many 
seem not quite available for that idea which they 
represent ? Now and then comes a bolder spirit, 
I should rather say, a mqre surrendered soul, 
more informed and led by God, which is much 
in advance of the rest, quite beyond their sym- 
pathy, but predicts what shall soon be the gen- 
eral fulness; as when we stand by the seashore, 
whilst the tide is coming in, a wave comes up 
the beach far higher than any foregoing one, and 
recedes ; and for a long while none comes up to 
that mark ; but after some time the whole sea is 
there and beyond it. 

But we are not permitted to stand as specta- 
tors of the pageant which the times exhibit ; we 
are parties also, and have a responsibility which 
isbot to be declined. A little while this inter- 
val of wonder and comparison is permitted us, 
but to the end that we shall play a manly part. 
As the solar system moves forward in the heav- 
ens, certain stars open before us, and certain stars 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 259 

close up behind us ; so is man's life. The repu- 
tations that were great and inaccessible change 
and tarnish. How great were once Lord Ba- 
con's dimensions ! he is now reduced almost to 
the middle height ; and many another star has 
turned out to be a planet or an asteroid : only a 
few are the fixed stars which have no parallax, 
or none for us. The change and decline of old 
reputations are the gracious marks of our own 
growth. Slowly, like light of morning, it steals 
on us, the new fact, that we, who were pupils 
or aspirants, are now society : do compose a 
portion of that head and heart we are wont to 
think worthy of all reverence and heed. We 
are the representatives of religion and intellect, 
and stand in the light of Ideas, whose rays stream 
through us to those younger and more in the 
dark. What further relations we sustain, what 
new lodges we are entering, is now unknown. 
To-day is a king in disguise. To-day always 
looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an 
uniform experience, that all good and great and 
happy actions are made up precisely of these 
blank to-days. lict us not be so deceived. Let 
us unmask the king as he passes. Let us not 
inhabit times of wonderful and various promise 
without divining their tendency. Let us not see 
the foundations of nations, and of a now and 



260 LECTURE OK THE TIMES. 

better order of things laid, with roving eyes, an<l 
an attention preoccupied with trifles. 

The two omnipresent parties of History, the 
party of the Past and the party of the Future, 
divide society to-day as of old. Here is the in- 
numerable multitude of those who accept the 
state and the church from the last generation, 
and stand on no argument but possession. They 
have reason also, and, as I think, better reason 
than is commonly stated. No Burke, no Metter- 
nich has yet done full justice to the side of con- 
servatism. But this class, however large, rely- 
ing not on the intellect but on the instinct, blends 
itself with the brute forces of nature, is respecta- 
ble only as nature is, but the individuals have no 
attraction for us. It is the dissenter, the theo- 
rist, the aspirant, who is quitting this ancient 
domain to embark on seas of adventure, who 
engages our interest. Omitting then for the 
present all notice of the stationary class, we shall 
find that the movement party divides itself into 
two classes, the actors, and the students. 

The actors constitute that great army of mar- 
tjrrs who, .at least in Ameri-ca, by their conscience 
and philanthropy, occupy the ground which Cal- 
vinism occupied in the last age, and compose 
the visible church of the existing generation 
The present age will be marked by its harvest of 



LECTURE OJH THE TIMES. 261 

projects for the reform of domestic, civil, literary, 
and ecclesiastical institutions. The leaders of 
the crusades against War, Negro slavery, Intem- 
perance, Government based on force, Usages of 
trade, Court and Custom-house Oaths, and so on 
to the agitators on the system of Education and 
the laws of Property, are the right successors of 
Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, Penn, Wesley, and 
Whitfield. They have the same> virtues and vices ; 
the same noble impulse, and the same bigotry. 
These movements are on all accounts important ; 
they not only check the special abuses, but they 
educate the conscience and the intellect of the 
people. How can such a question as the Slave- 
trade be agitated for forty years by all the Chris- 
tian nations, without throwing great light on 
ethics into the general mind ? The fury, with 
which the slave-trader defends every inch of his 
bloody deck, and his howling auction-platform, is 
a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind, to wake 
the dull, and drive all neutrals to take sides, and 
to listen to the argument and the verdict. The 
Temperance-question, which rides the conversa- 
tion often thousand circles, and is tacitly recalled 
at every public and at every private table, dra^^^- 
mg with it all the curious ethics of the Pledge, 
of the Wine-question, of the equity of the manu- 
facture and the trade, is a gymnastic training to 



262 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

the casuistry and conscience of the time. Anti- 
masonry had a deep right and wrong, which 
gradually emerged to sight out of the turbid con- 
troversy. The political questions touching the 
Banks ; the Tariff; the limits of the executive 
power; the right of the constituent to instruct 
the representative ; the treatment of the Indians ; 
the Boundary wars ; the Congress of nations ; 
are all pregnant with ethical conclusions ; and it 
is well if government and our social order can 
extricate themselves from these alembics, and 
find themselves still government and social order. 
The student of history will hereafter compute 
the singular value of our endless discussion of 
questions, to the mind of the period. 

Whilst each of these aspirations and attempts 
of the people for the Better is magnified by 
the natural exaggeration of its advocates, until 
it excludes the others from sight, and repels 
discreet persons by the unfairness of the plea, 
the movements are in reality all parts of one 
movement. There is a perfect chain, — see it, 
or see it not, — of reforms emerging from the 
surrounding darkness, each cherishing some part 
of the general idea, and all must be seen, in 
order to do justice to any one. Seen in this 
their natural connection, they are sublime. The 
conscience of the Age demonstrates itself in this 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 2G3 

effort to raise the life of man by Nputting it in 
harmony with his idea of the Beautiful and the 
Just. The history of reform is always identical, 
it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. 
Our modes of living are not agreeable to our 
imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. 
"We arraign our daily employments. They ap- 
pear to us unfit, unworthy of the faculties we 
spend on them. In conversation with a wise 
man, we find ourselves apologizing for our em- 
ployments ; we speak of them with shame. 
Nature, literature, science, childhood, appear to 
us beautiful ; but not our own daily work, not 
the ripe fruit and considered labors of man. 
This beauty which the fancy finds in every- 
thing else, certainly accuses the manner of ]' '. 
we lead. Why should it be hateful ? Why 
should it contrast thus with all natural beauty ? 
Why should it not be poetic, and invite and 
raise us ? Is there a necessity that the works of 
man should be sordid ? Perhaps not. — Out of 
this fair Idea in the mind springs the effort at 
the Perfect. It is the interior testimony to a 
fairer possibility of life and manners, which 
agitates society every day with the offer of 
some new amendment. If we would make 
more strict inquiry concerning its origin, we find 
ourselves rapidly approaching the inner boun- 



264 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

daries of thought, that term where speech be^ 
comes silence, and science conscience. For the 
origin of all reform is in that mysterious fountain 
of the moral sentiment in man, which, amidst 
the natural, ever contains the supernatural for 
men. That is new and creative. That is alive. 
That alone can make a man other than he is.. 
Here or nowhere resides unbounded energy, un- 
bounded power. 

The new voices in the wilderness crying 
" Repent," have revived a hope, which had well- 
nigh perished out of the world, that the thoughts 
of the mind may yet, in some distant age, in 
some happy hour, be executed by the hands. 
That is the hope, of which all other hopes are 
parts. For some ages, these ideas have been 
consigned to the poet and musical composer, to 
the prayers and the sermons of churches ; but 
the thought, that they can ever have any footing 
in real life, seems long since to have been ex- 
ploded by all judicious persons. Milton, in his 
best tract, describes a relation between religion 
and the daily occupations, which is true until 
this time. 

" A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and 
to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so en- 
tangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that 
of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock 



. LECTUEE O:^ THE TIMES. 265 

going upon that trade. What should he do? 
Fain he would have the name to be religiou.^ ; 
fain he would bear up with his neighbors in that. 
What does he, therefore, but resolve to give 
over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, 
to whose care and credit he may commit the 
\vhole managing of his religious affairs ; some 
divine of note and estimation that must be. To 
him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of 
his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his 
custody ; and indeed makes the very person of 
that man his religion ; esteems his associating 
with him a sufficient evidence and commenda- 
tory of his own piety. So that a man may say, 
his religion is now no more within himself, but 
is become a dividual moveable, and goes and 
comes near him, according as that good man fre- 
quents the house. He entertains him, gives hira 
gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; his religioa comes 
home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and 
sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted, and 
after the malmsey, or some well spiced beverage, 
and better brealtfasted than he whose morning 
appetite would have gladly fed on green figs 
between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion 
walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind enter- 
tainer in the shop, trading all day without his 
religion." 

23 



266 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

This picture would serve for our times. Re- 
ligion was not invited to eat or drink or sleep 
with us, or to make or divide an estate, but was 
a holiday guest. Such omissions judge the 
church ; as the compromise made with the slave- 
holder, not much noticed at first, every day 
appears more flagrant mischief to the American 
constitution. But now the purists are looking 
into all these matters. The more intelligent are 
growing uneasy on the subject of Marriage. 
They wish to see the character represented also 
in that covenant. There shall be nothing brutal 
in it, but it shall honor the man and the woman, 
as much as the most diffusive and universal 
action. Grimly the same spirit looks into the 
law of Property, and accuses men of driving a 
trade in the great boundless providence which 
had given the air, the water, and the land to 
men, to use and not to fence in and monopolize. 
It casts its eye on Trade, and Day Labor, and 
so it goes up and down, paving the earth with 
eyes, destroying privacy and making thorough- 
lights. Is all this for nothing ? Do you suppose 
that the reformers, which are preparing, will be 
as superficial as those we know ? 

By the books it reads and translates, judge 
what books it will presently print. A great deal 
of the profoundest thinking of antiquity, which 



LECTUBE ON THE TIMES. 267 

had become as good as obsolete for us, is now 
re-appearing in extracts and allusions, and in 
twenty years will get all printed anew. See 
how daring is the reading, the speculation, the 
experimenting of the time. If no;w some genius 
shall arise who could unite these scattered rays ! 
And always such a genius does embody the ideas 
of each time. Here is great variety and richness 
of mysticism, each part of which now only dis- 
gusts, whilst it forms the sole thought of some 
poor Perfectionist or " Comer out," yet, when it 
shall be taken up as the garniture of some pro- 
found and all-reconciling thinker, will appear 
the rich and appropriate decoration of his robes. 
These reforms are our contemporaries ; they 
are ourselves ; our own light, and sight, and 
conscience; they only name the relation which 
subsists between us and the vicious institutions 
which they go to rectify. They are the simplest 
statements of man in these matters ; the plain 
right and wrong. I cannot choose but allow and 
honor them. The impulse is good, and the 
theory ; the practice is less beautiful. The Re- 
formers affirm the inward life, but they do not 
trust it, but use outward and vulgar means. ^^ 
They do not rely on precisely that strength ^' 
which wins me to their cause ; not on love, not * 
on a principle, but on men, on multitudes, on 



268 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

circumstances, on money, on party ; that is, oa 
fear, on wrath, and pride. The love which lifted 
men to the sight of these better ends, was the 
true and best distinction of this time, the dispo- 
sition to trust a principle more than a material 
force. I think that the soul of reform ; the con- 
viction, that not sensualism, not slavery, not 
war, not imprisonment, not even government, are 
needed, — but in lieu of them all, reliance on 
the sentiment of man, which will work best the 
more it is trusted ; not reliance on numbers, but, 
contrariwise, distrust of numbers, and the feeling 
that then are we strongest, when most private 
and alone. The young men, who have been 
vexing society for these last years with regener- 
ative methods, seem to have made this mistake ; 
they ail exaggerated some special means, and all 
failed to see that the Reform of Reforms must 
be accomplished without means. 

The Reforms have their high origin in an 
ideal justice, but they do not retain the purity 
of an idea. They are quickly organized in some 
low, inadequate form, and present no more po- 
etic image to the mind, than the evil tradition 
which they reprobated. They mix the fire of 
the moral sentiment with personal and party 
heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the 
blindness that prefers some darling measure to 



LECTUEE OK THE TIMES. 269 

justice and truth. Those, who are urging with 
most ardor what are called the greatest benefits 
of mankind, are narrow, self-pleasing^ conceited 
men, and affect us as the insane do. They bite 
us, and we run mad also. I think the work of 
the reformer as innocent as other work that is 
done around him ; but when I have seen it near, 
I do not like it better. It is done in the same 
way, it is done profanely, not piously ; by man- 
agement, by tactics, and clamor. It is a buzz 
in the ear. I cannot feel any pleasure in sacri- 
fices which display to me such partiality of 
character. We do not want actions, but men ; 
not a chemical drop of water, but rain ; the 
spirit that sheds and showers actions, countless, 
endless actions. You have on some occasion 
played a bold part. You have set your heart 
and face against society, when you thought it 
wrong, and returned it &own for frown. Excel- 
lent : now can you afford to forget it, reckoning 
all your action no more than the passing of your 
hand through the air, or a little breath of yout 
mouth? The world leaves no track in space, 
and the greatest action of man no mark in the 
vast idea. To the youth diffident of his ability, 
and full of compunction at his unprofitable ex- 
istence, the temptation is always great to lend 
himself to public movements, and as one of a 
23* 



270 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

party accomplish what he cannot hope to effect 
alone. But he must resist the degradation of a 
man to a measure. I must act with truth, though 
I should never come to act, as you caU it, with 
effect. I must consent to inaction. A patience 
which is grand ; a brave and cold neglect of the 
offices which prudence exacts, so it be done in a 
deep upper piety ; a consent to solitude and in- 
action, which proceeds out of an unwillingness 
to violate character, is the century which makes 
the gem. Whilst therefore I desire to express 
the respect and joy I feel before this sublime 
connection of reforms, now in their infancy 
around us, I urge the more earnestly the para- 
mount duties of self-reliance. I cannot find 
language of sufficient energy to convey my 
sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All 
men, aU things, the state, the church, yea the 
friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal 
beside the sanctuary of the heart. "With so 
much awe, with so much fear, let it be re- 
spected. 

The great majority of men, unable to judge 
of any principle until its light falls on a fact, are 
not aware of the evil that is around them, until 
they see it in some gross form, as in a class of 
intemperate men, or slaveholders, or soldiers, 
or fraudulent persons. Then they are greatly 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 271 

moved ; and magnifying the importance of that 
wrong, they fancy that if that abuse were re- 
dressed, all would go well, and they fill the land 
with clamor to correct it. Hence the missionary 
and other religious efforts. K every island and 
every house had a Bible, if every child was 
brought into the Sunday School, would the 
wounds of the world heal, and man be up- 
right? 

But the man of ideas, accounting the circum- 
stance nothing, judges of the commonwealth 
from the state of his own mind. ' If,' he says, 
' I am selfish, then is there slavery, or the effort 
to establish it, wherever I go. But if I am just, 
then. is there no slavery, let the laws say what 
they will. For if I treat all men as gods, how 
to me can there be any such thing as a slave ? ' 
But how frivolous is your war against circum- 
stances. This denouncing philanthropist is 
himself a slaveholder in every word and look. 
Does he free me ? Does he cheer me ? He is 
the state of Georgia, or Alabama, with their san- 
guinary slave-laws, walking here on our north- 
eastern shores. We are all thankful he has no 
more political power, as we are fond of liberty 
ourselves. I am afraid our virtue is a little geo- 
graphical. I am not mortified by our vice ; that 
i^ )bduracy ; it bolors and palters, it curses and 



272 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

swears, and I can see to the end of it; but, I 
own, our virtue makes me ashamed ; so sour and 
narrow, so thin and blind, virtue so vice-like. 
Then again, how trivial seem the contests of the 
abolitionist, whilst he aims merely at the cir- 
cumstance of the slave. Give the slave the 
least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is 
no slave : you are the slave : he not only in his 
humility feels his superiority, feels that much 
deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, 
but he makes you feel it too. He is the master. 
The exaggeration, which our young people make 
of his wrongs, characterizes themselves. What 
are no trifles to them, they naturally think are 
no trifles to Pompey. , 

We say, then, that the reforming movement 
is sacred in its origin ; in its management and 
details timid and profane. These benefactors 
hope to raise man by improving his circum- 
stances : by combination of that which is dead, 
they hope to make something alive. In vain. 
By new infusions alone of the spirit by which he 
is made and directed, can he be re-made and 
reinforced. The sad Pestalozzi, who shared 
with all ardent spirits the hope of Europe on 
the outbreak of the French Revolution, after 
witnessing its sequel, recorded his conviction, 
^at <' the amelioration of outward circumstances 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 273 

will be the effect, but can never be the means 
of mental and moral improvement." Quitting 
now the class of actors, let us turn to see how 
it stands with the other class of which we spoke, 
namely, the students. 

A new disease has fallen on the life of man. 
Every Age, like every human body, has its own 
distemper. Other times have had war, or fam- 
ine, or a barbarism domestic or bordering, as 
their antagonism. Our forefathers walked in 
xhe world and went to then* graves, tormented 
with the fear of Sin, and the terror of the Day 
of Judgment. These terrors have lost their 
force, and our torment is Unbelief, the Uncer- 
tainty as to what we ought to do ; the distrust 
of the value of what we do, and the distrust 
that the Necessity (which we all at last believe 
in) is fair and beneficent. Our Religion assumes 
the negative form of rejection. Out of love of 
the true, we repudiate the false : and the Re- 
ligion is an abolishing criticism. A great per- 
plexity hangs like a cloud on the brow of all 
cultivated persons, a certain imbecility in the 
best spirits, which distinguishes the period. We 
do not find the same trait in the Arabian, in the 
Hebrew, in Greek, Roman, Norman, English 
periods ; no, but in other men a natural firm- 
ness. The men did not see beyond the need of 



274 ^ LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

the hour. They planted their foot strong, and 
doubted nothing. We mistrust every step we 
^ke. We find it the worst thing about time, 
^hat we know not what to do with it. We are 
60 sharp-sighted that we can neither work nor 
think, neither read Plato nor not read him. 

Then there is what is called a too intellectual 
tendency. Can there be too much intellect ? 
We have never met with any such excess. But 
the criticism, which is levelled at the laws and 
manners, ends in thought, without causing a 
new method of life. The genius of the day 
does not incline to a deed, but to a beholding. 
It is not that men do not wish to act ; they pine 
to be employed, but are paralyzed by the uncer- 
tainty what they should do. The inadequacy 
of the work to the faculties, is the painful per- 
ception which keeps them still. This happens 
to the best. Then, talents bring their usual 
temptations, and the current literature and po- 
etry with perverse ingenuity draw us away from 
life to solitude and meditation. This could well 
be borne, if it were great and involuntary; if 
the men were ravished by their thought, and 
hurried into ascetic extravagances. Society 
could then manage to release their shoulder frcm 
its wheel, and grant them for a time this privi- 
lege of sabbath. But they are not so. Think- 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 275 

ing, which was a rage, is become an art. The 
thinker gives me results, and never invites me 
to be present with him at his invocation of truth, 
and to enjoy with him its proceeding into his 
mind. 

So little action amidst such audacious and 
yet sincere profession, that we begin to doubt if 
that great revolution in the art of war, which has 
made it a game of posts instead of a game of 
battles, has not operated on Reform; whether 
this be not als'^ a war of posts, a paper blockade, 
in which each party is to display the utmost re- 
sources of his spirit and belief, and no conflict 
occur ; but the world shall take that course 
which the demonstration of the truth shall indi- 
cate. 

But we must pay for being too intellectual, as 
they call it. People are not as light-hearted for 
it. I think men never loved life less. I ques- 
tion if care and doubt ever wrote their names so 
legibly on the faces of any population. This 
Ennuij for which we Saxons had no name, this 
word of France has got a terrific significance. 
It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light. 
Old age begins in the nursery, and before the 
young American is put into jacket and trow- 
sers, he says, ' I want something which I never 
«aw before ; ' and ' I wish I was not I.' I have 



276 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

seen the same gloom on the brow even of those 
adventurers from the intellectual class, who had 
dived deepest and with most success into active 
life. I have seen the authentic sign of anxiety 
and perplexity on the greatest forehead of the 
state. The canker worms have crawled to the 
topmost bough of the wild elm, and swing down 
from that. Is there less oxygen in the atmos- 
phere ? What has checked in this age the ani- 
mal spirits which gave to our forefathers their 
bounding pulse ? 

But have a little patience with this melan- 
choly humor. Their unbelief arises out of a 
greater Belief ; their inaction out of a scorn of 
inadequate action. By the side of these men, 
the hot agitators have a certain cheap and ridic- 
ulous air ; they even look smaller than the 
others. Of the two, I own, I like the specu- 
lators best. They have some piety which looks 
with faith to a fair Future, unprofaned by rash 
and unequal attempts to realize it. And truly 
we shall find much to console us, when we con- 
sider the cause o± their uneasiness. It is the 
love of greatness, it is the need of harmony, the 
contrast of the dwarfish Actual with the exorbi- 
tant Idea. No man can compare the ideas and 
aspirations of the innovators of the pres^^.nt day, 
with those of former periods, without feeling 



LECTUEE OIT THE TIMES. 277 

how great and high this criticism is. The revo- 
lutions that impend over society are not now 
from ambition and rapacity, from impatience of 
one or another form of government, but from 
new modes of thinking, which shall recompose 
society after a new order, which shall animate 
labor by love and science, which shall destroy 
the value of many kinds of property, and re- 
place all property within the dominion of reason 
and equity. There was never so great a thought 
laboring in the breasts of men, as now. It al- 
most seems as if what was aforetime spoken 
fabulously and hieroglyphically, was now spoken 
plainly, the doctrine, namely, of the indwelling 
of the Creator in man. The spiritualist wishes 
this only, that the spkitual principle should be 
suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all 
possible applications to the state of man, with- 
out the admission of anything unspiritual, that 
is, anything positive, dogmatic, or personal. The 
excellence of this class consists in this, that they 
have believed ; that, affirming the need of new 
and higher modes of living and action, they 
have abstained from the recommendation of 
low methods. Their fault is that they have 
stopped at the intellectual perception ; that their 
will is not yet inspired from the Fountain of 
Love. But whose fault is this? and what a 
24 



278 LECTUEE ON THE TIMES, 

fault, and to what inquiry does it lead ! We 
have come to that which is the sprmg of all pow- 
er, of beauty and virtue, of art and poetry ; and 
who shall tell us according to what law its in- 
spirations and its informations are given or with- 
holden ? 

I do not wish to be guilty of the narrowness 
and pedantry of inferring the tendency and ge- 
nius of the Age from a few and insufficient facts 
or persons. Every age has a thousand sides 
and signs and tendencies ; and it is only when 
surveyed from inferior points of view, that great 
varieties of character appear. Our time too is 
full of activity and performance. Is there not 
something comprehensive in the grasp of a so- 
ciety which to great mechanical invention, and 
the best institutions of property, adds the most 
daring theories ; which explores the subtlest and 
most universal problems ? At the manifest risk 
of repeating what every other Age has thought 
of itself, we might say, we think the Genius of 
this Age more philosophical than any other has 
been, righter in its aims, truer, with less fear, less 
fable, less mixture of any sort. 

But turn it how we will, as we ponder this 
meaning of the times, every new thought drives 
us to the deep fact, that the Time is the chUd of 
the Eternity. The main interest which any 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 279 

aspects of the Times can have for us, is the great 
spirit which gazes through them, the light which 
they can shed on the wonderful questions, "What 
we are ? and Whither we tend ? We do not 
wish to be deceived. Here we drift, like white 
sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the 
wave, now darkling in the trough of the sea ; — 
but from what port did we sail ? Who knows ? 
Or to what port are we bound ? Who knows ? 
There is no one to tell us but such poor weather- 
tossed mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as 
we pass, or who have hoisted some signal, or 
floated to us some letter in a bottle from far. 
But what know they more than we? They 
also found themselves on this wondrous sea. 
No; from the older sailors, nothing. Over aU 
their speaking-trumpets, the gray sea and the 
loud winds answer, Not in us ; not in Time. 
Where then but in Ourselves, where but in that 
Thought through which we communicate with 
absolute nature, and are made aware that, whilst 
we shed the dust of which we are built, grain 
by grain, tiU it is all gone, the law which clothes 
us with humanity remains anew ? where, but in 
the intuitions which are vouchsafed us from 
within, shall we learn the Truth ? Faithless, 
faithless, we fancy that with the dust we depart 
and are not ; and do not know that the law and 



280 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

the perception of the law are at last one ; that 
only as much as the law enters us, becomes us^ 
we are living men, — immortal with the immor- 
tality of this law. Underneath all these appear- 
ances, lies that which is, that which lives, that 
which causes. This ever renewing generation 
of appearances rests on a reality, and a reality 
that is alive. 

To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects 
of nature, the departments of life, and the pas- 
sages of his experience, is simply the informa- 
tion they yield him of this supreme nature which 
lurks within all. That reality, that causing force 
is moral. The Moral Sentiment is but its oth^r 
name. It makes by its presence or absence 
right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, genius or 
depravation. As the granite comes to the sur- 
face, and towers into the highest mountains, and, 
if we dig down, we find it below the superficial 
strata, so in all the details of our domestic or 
civil life, is hidden the elemental reality, which 
ever and anon comes to the surface, and forms 
the grand men, who are the leaders and exam- 
ples, rather than the companions of the race. 
The granite is curiously concealed under a thou- 
sand formations and surfaces, under fertile soils, 
and grasses, and flowers, under well-manured, 
arable fields, and large towns and cities, but it 



LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 281 

makes the foundation of these, and is always in- 
dicating its presence by slight but sure signs. 
So is it with the Life of our life ; so close does 
that also hide. I read it in glad and in weeping 
eyes : I read it in the pride and in the humility 
of people : it is recognized in every bargain and 
in every complaisance, in every criticism, and in 
all praise : it is voted for at elections ; it wins 
the cause with juries ; it rides the stormy elo- 
quence of the senate, sole victor ; histories are 
written of it, holidays decreed to it ; statues, 
tombs, churches, built to its honor; yet men 
seem to fear and to shun it, when it comes 
barely to view in our immediate neighborhood. 

For that reality let us stand : that let us serve : 
and for that speak. Only as far as that shines 
through them, are these times or any times worth 
consideration. I wish to speak of the politics, 
education, business, and religion around us, with- 
out ceremony or false deference. You will 
absolve me from the charge of flippancy, or ma- 
lignity, or the desire to say smart things at the 
expense of whomsoever, when you see _ that 
reality is all we prize, and that we are bound on 
our entrance into nature to speak for that. Let 
it not be recorded in our own memories, that in 
this moment of the Eternity, when we who 
were named by our names, flitted across the 
24* 



282 LECTURE ON THE TIMES. 

light, we were afraid of any fact, or disgraced 
the fair Day by a pusillanimous preference of 
our bread to our freedom. What is the scholar, 
what is the man /or, but for hospitality to every 
new thought of his time ? Have you leisure, 
power, property. Mends? you shall be the asy- 
lum and patron of every new thought, every 
unproven opinion, every untried project, which 
proceeds out of good will and honest seeking. 
All the newspapers, all the tongues of to-day 
will of course at first defame what is noble ; but 
you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, 
but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it : and 
the highest compliment man ever receives from 
heaven, is the sending to him its disguised and 
discredited angels. 



THE CONSERYATIVE. 

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, ROSTOV, 
DECEMBER 9, 1841. 



THE CONSERVATIVE 



The two parties which divide the state, the 
party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, 
are very old, and have disputed the possession 
of the world ever since it was made. This 
quarrel is the subject of civil history. The con- 
servative party established the reverend hierar- 
chies and monarchies of the most ancient world. 
The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent 
state and colony, of old usage and accommodation 
to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears 
in all countries and times. The war rages not 
only in battle-fields, in national councils, and 
ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's 
bosom with opposing advantages every hour. 
On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, 
now the other gets the day, and still the fight 
renews itself as if for the first time, under new 
names and hot personalities. 



286 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, 
must have a correspondent depth of seat in the 
human constitution. It is the opposition of Past 
and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Under- 
standing and the Reason. It is the primal anta- 
gonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles 
of nature. 

There is a fragment of old fable which seems 
somehow to have been dropped from the current 
mythologies, which may deserve attention, as it 
appears to relate to this subject. 

Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or with 
none but the great Uranus or Heaven beholding 
him, and he created an oyster. Then he would 
act again, but he made nothing more, but went 
on creating the race of oysters. Then Uranus 
cried, ' a new work, O Saturn ! the old is not 
good again.' 

Saturn replied. ^ I fear. There is^ not only 
the alternative of making and not making, but 
also of unmaking. Seest thou the great sea, 
how it ebbs and flows ? so is it with me ; my 
power ebbs ; and if I put forth my hands, I shall 
not do, but undo. Therefore I do what I have 
done ; I hold what I have got ; and so I resist 
Night and Chaos.' 

' O Saturn,' replied Uranus, ' thou canst not 
hold thine own, but by making more. Thy 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 287 

oysters are barnacles and cockles, and with the 
next flowing of the tide, they will be pebbles 
and sea-foam.' 

'I see,' rejoins Saturn, 'thou art in league 
with Night, thou art become an evil eye ; thou 
spakest from love; now thy words smite me 
with hatred. I appeal to Fate, must there not 
be rest ?' — ' I appeal to Fate also,' said Uranus, 
' must there not be motion ? ' — But Saturn was 
silent, and went on making oysters for a thou- 
sand years. 

After that, the word of Uranus came into his 
mind like a ray of the sun, and he made Jupiter ; 
and then he feared again ; and nature froze, the 
things that were made went backward, and, to 
save the world, Jupiter slew his father Saturn. 

This may stand for the earliest account of a 
conversation on politics between a Conservative 
and a Radical, which has come down to us. It 
is ever thus. It is the counteraction of the cen- 
tripetal and the centrifugal forces. Innovation 
is the salient energy ; Conservatism the pause 
on the last movement. 'That which is was 
made by God,' saith Conservatism. 'He is 
leaving that, he is entering this other ; ' rejoins 
Innovation. 

There is always a certain meanness in the 
argument of conservatism, joined with a certain 



288 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

superiority in its fact. It affirms because it 
holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will 
not open its eyes to see a better fact. The 
castle, which conservatism is set to defend, is 
the actual state of things, good and bad. The 
project of innovation is the best possible state of 
things. Of course, conservatism always has the 
worst of the argument, is always apologizing, 
pleading a necessity, pleading that to change 
would be to deteriorate; it must saddle itself 
with the mountainous load of the violence and 
vice of society, must deny the possibility of 
good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the 
prophet ; whilst innovation is always in the 
right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final 
success. Conservatism stands on man's con- 
fessed limitations; reform on his indisputable 
infinitude ; conservatism on circumstance ; liber- 
alism on power; one goes to make an adroit 
member of the social frame ; the other to post- 
pone all things to the man himself ; conservatism 
is debonnair and social ; reform is individual and 
imperious. We are reformers in spring and 
summer ; in autumn and winter, we stand by the 
old; reformers in the morning, conservers at 
night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism neg- 
ative ; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for 
truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold 



THE CONSEEVATIVE. 289 

another's worth ; reform more disposed to main- 
tain and increase its own. Conservatism makes 
no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention ; 
it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no 
prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great dif- 
ference to your figure and to your thought, 
whether your foot is advancing or receding. 
Conservatism never puts the foot forward; in 
the hour when it does that, it is not establish- 
ment, but reform. Conservatism tends to uni- 
versal seeming and treachery, believes in a 
negative fate ; believes that men's temper gov- 
erns them ; that for me, it avails not to trust 
in principles ; they will fail me ; I must bend a 
little ; it distrusts nature ; it thinks there is a 
general law without a particular application, — 
law for all that does not include any one. Re- 
form in its antagonism inclines to asinine resist- 
ance, to kick with hoofs ; it runs to egotism and 
bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pre- 
tension, to unnatural refining and elevation, 
which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. ^ 
And so whilst we do not go beyond general 
statements, it may be safely affirmed of these 
two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a 
good half, but an impossible w^hole. Each ex- 
poses the abuses of the other, but in a true 
society, in a true man, both must combine. Na- 
25 



290 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

ture does not give the crown of its approbation, 
namely, beauty, to any action or emblem oi 
actor, but to one which combines both these 
elements ; not to the rock which resists the 
waves from age to age, nor to the wa^e which 
lashes incessantly the rock, but the sui)erior 
beauty is with the oak which stands wilh its 
hundred arms against the storms of a century, 
and grows every year like a sapling ; or the 
river which ever flowing, yet is found in the 
same bed from age to age ; or, greatest of all, 
the man who has subsisted for years amid the 
changes of nature, yet has distanced himself, so 
that when you remember what he was, and see 
what he is, you say, what strides ! what a dis- 
parity is here ! 

Throughout nature the past combines in every 
creature with the present. Each of the convo- 
lutions of the sea-shell, each node and spine marks 
one year of the fish's life, what was the mouth 
of the shell for one season, with the addition of 
new matter by the growth of the animal, be- 
coming an ornamental node. The leaves and 
a shell of soft wood are all that the vegetation of 
this summer has made, but the solid columnar 
stem, which lifts that bank of foliage into the 
air to draw the eye and to cool us with its shade, 
is the gift and legacy of dead and buried yearsi 



THE CO]^SERYATIYE. 291 

In nature, each of these elements being always 
present, each theory has a natural support. As 
we take our stand on Necessity, or on Ethics, 
shall we go for the conservative, or for the re- 
former. If we read the world historically, we 
shall say. Of all the ages, the present hour and 
circumstance is the cumulative result; this is 
the best throw of the dice of nature that has 
yet been, or that is yet possible. K we see it 
from the side of Will, or the Moral Sentiment, 
we shall accuse the Past and the Present, and 
require the impossible of the Future. ' 

But although this bifold fact lies thus united 
in real nature, and so united that no man can 
continue to exist in whom both these elements 
do not work, yet men are not philosophers, but 
are rather very foolish children, who, by reason 
of their partiality, see everything in the most 
absurd manner, and are the victims at all 
times of the nearest object. There is even no 
philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. 
Our experience, our perception is conditioned by 
the need to acquire in parts and in succession, 
that is, with every truth a certain falsehood. As 
this is the invariable method of our training, we 
must give it allowance, and suffer men to learn 
as they have done for six millenniums, a word 
at a time, to pair off into insane parties, and 



292 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

learn the amount of truth each knows, by the 
denial of an equal amount of truth. For the 
present, then, to come at what sum is attainable 
to us, we must even hear the parties plead as 
parties. 

That which is best about conservatism, that 
which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, 
inspires reverence in all, is the Inevitable. There 
is the question not only, what the conservative 
says for himself ? but, why must he say it ? What 
insurmountable fact binds him to that side ? Here 
is the fact which men call Fate, and fate in dread 
degrees, fate behind fate, not to be disposed of 
by the consideration that the Conscience com- 
mands this or that, but necessitating the ques- 
tion, whether the faculties of man will play him 
true in resisting the facts of universal experience ? 
For although the commands of the Conscience 
are essentially absolute, they are historically 
limitary. Wisdom does not seek a literal recti- 
tude, but an useful, that is, a conditioned one, 
such a one as the faculties of man and the con- 
stitution of things will warrant. The reformer, 
the partisan loses himself in driving to the ut- 
most some specialty of right conduct, until his 
own nature and all nature resist him ; but Wis- 
dom attempts nothing enormous and dispropor- 
tioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 293 

perform or nearly perform. We have all a cer- 
tain intellection or presentiment of reform exist- 
ing in the mind, which does not yet descend 
into the character, and those who throw them- 
selves bhndly on this lose themselves. What- 
ever they attempt in that direction, fails, and 
reacts suicidally on the actor himself. This is 
the penalty of having transcended nature. For 
the existing world is not a dream, and cannot 
with impunity be treated as a dream ; neither is 
it a disease ; but it is the ground on which you 
stand, it is the mother of whom you were born. 
Reform converses with possibilities, perchance 
with impossibilities ; but here is sacred fact. 
This also was. true, or it could not be : it had 
life in it, or it could not have existed ; it has life 
in it, or it could not continue. Your schemes 
may be feasible, or may not be, but this has the 
endorsement of nature and a long friendship and 
cohabitation with the powers of nature. This 
will stand untU a better cast of the dice is made. 
The contest between the Future and the Past is 
one between Divinity entering, and Divinity 
departing. You are welcome to try your experi- 
ments, and, if you can, to displace the actual 
order by that ideal republic you announce, for 
nothing but God will expel God. But plainly 
the burden of proof must lie with the projector. 
25* 



294 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

We hold to this, until you can demonstrate 
something better. 

The system of property and law goes back for 
its origin to barbarous and sacred times ; it is the 
fruit of the same mysterious cause as the mineral 
or animal world. There is a natural sentiment 
and prepossession in favor of age, of ancestors, 
of barbarous and aboriginal usages, which is a 
homage to the element of necessity and divinity 
which is in them. The respect for the old names 
of places, of mountains, and streams, is universal. 
The Indian and barbarous name can never be 
supplanted without loss. The ancients tell us 
that the gods loved the Ethiopians for their sta- 
ble customs ; and the Egyptians and Chaldeans, 
whose origin could not be explored, passed 
among the jmiior tribes of Greece and Italy for 
sacred nations. 

Moreover, so deep is the foundation of the ex- 
isting social system, that it leaves no one out of 
it. We may be partial, but Fate is not. All 
men have their root in it. You who quarrel 
with the arrangements of society, and are willing 
to embroil all, and risk the indisputable good 
that exists, for the chance of better, live, move, 
and have your being in this, and your deeds con- 
tradict your words every day. For as you can- 
not jump from the ground without using the 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 295 

resistance of the ground, nor put out the boat to 
sea, without shoving from the shore, nor attain 
liberty without rejecting obligation, so you are 
under the necessity of using the Actual order of 
things, in order to disuse it ; to live by it, whilst 
you wish to take away its life. The past has 
baked your loaf, and in the strength of its bread 
you would break up the oven. But you are be- 
trayed by your own nature. You also are con- 
servatives. However men please to style them- 
selves, I see no other than a conservative party. 
You are not only identical with us in your 
needs, but also in your methods and aims. 
You quarrel with my conservatism, but it is to 
build up one of your own ; it will have a new 
beginning, but the same course and end, the 
same trials, the same passions ; among the lov- 
ers of the new I observe that there is a jealousy 
of the newest, and that the seceder from the 
seceder is as damnable as the pope himself. 

On these and the like grounds of general state- 
ment, conservatism plants itself without danger 
of being displaced. Especially before this per- 
sonal appeal, the innovator must confess his 
weakness, must confess that no man is to be 
found good enough to be entitled to stand cham- 
pion for the principle. But when this great 
tendency comes to practical encounters, and is 



296 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

challenged by young men, to whom it is no ab- 
straction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and 
exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem 
injurious. The youth, gf course, is an innovator 
by the fact of his birth. There he stands, newly 
bom on the planet, a universal beggar, with all 
the reason of things, one would say, on his side. 
In Lis first consideration how to feed, clothe, 
and warm himself, he is met by warnings on 
every hand, that this thing and that thing have 
owners, and he must go elsewhere. Then he 
says ; If I am born in the earth, where is my 
part? have the goodness, gentlemen of this 
world, to show me my wood-lot, where I may fell 
my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my 
pleasant ground where to build my cabin. 

' Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on 
your peril,' cry all the gentlemen of this world ; 
' but you may come and work in ours, for us, 
and we wiU give you a piece of bread.' 

' And what is that peril ? ' 

^ Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the 
act ; imprisonment, if we find you afterward,' 

' And by what authority, kind gentlemen ? ' 

' By our law.' 

* And your law, — is it just ? ' 

' As just for you as it was for us. We wrought 
for others under this law, and got our lands so/ 



THE CONSERYATIYE. . 297 

' I repeat the question. Is your law just ? ' 

' Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it 
is juster now than it was when we were born ; 
we have made it milder and more equal.' 

' I will none of your law,' returns the youth ; 
' it encumbers me. I cannot understand, or so 
much as spare time to read that needless library 
of your laws. Nature has sufficiently provided 
me with rewards and sharp penalties, to bind me 
not to transgress. Like the Persian noble of 
old, I ask "that I may neither command nor 
obey." I do not wish to enter into your com- 
plex social system. I shall serve those whom I 
can, and they who can will serve me. I shall 
seek those whom I love, and shun those whom 
I love not, and what more can all your laws 
render me ? ' 

With equal earnestness and good faith, replies 
to this plaintiff an upholder of the establishment, 
a man of many virtues : 

' Your opposition is feather-brained and over- 
fine. Young man, I have no skill to talk with 
you, but look at me ; I have risen early and sat 
late, and toiled honestly, and painfully for very 
many years. I never dreamed about methods ; 
I laid my bones to, and drudged for the good I 
possess ; it was not got by fraud, nor by luck, 
but by work, and you must show me a warrant 



298 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

like these stubborn facts in your own fidelitj 
and labor, before I suffer you, on the faith of a 
few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim 
to scatter it as your own.' 

'Now you touch the heart of the matter,' le- 
plies the reformer. ' To that fidelity and labor, I 
pay homage. I am unworthy to arraign your 
manner of living, until I too have been tried. 
But I should be more unworthy, if I did not 
tell you why I cannot walk in your steps. I 
find this vast network, which you call property, 
extended over the whole planet. I cannot occu- 
py the bleakest crag of the White Hills or the 
Alleghany Range, but some man or corporation 
^teps up to me to show me that it is his. Now, 
though I am very peaceable, and on my private 
account could well enough die, since it appears 
there was some mistake in my creation, and that 
I have been missent to this earth, where all the 
seats were already taken, — yet I feel called 
upon in behalf of rational nature, which I repre- 
sent, to declare to you my opinion, that, if the 
Earth is yours, so also is it mine. All your aggre- 
gate existences are less to me a fact than is my 
own ; as I am born to the earth, so the Earth is 
given to me, what I want of it to till and to plant ; 
nor could I, without pusillanimity, omit to claim 
so much. I must not o^ily have a name to liv^^ 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 299 

I must live. My genius leads me to build a 
different manner of life from any of yours. I can- 
not then spare you the whole world. I love you 
better. I must tell you the truth practically; 
and take that which you call yours. It is God's 
world and mine ; yours as much as you want, 
mine as much as I want Besides, I know your 
ways ; I know the symptoms of the disease. 
To the end of your power, you will serve this 
lie which cheats you. Your want is a gulf which 
the possession of the broad earth would not fiU. 
Yonder sun in heaven you would pluck down 
from shining on the universe, and make him a 
property and privacy, if you could ; and the moon 
and the north star you would quickly have occa- 
sion for in your closet and bed-chamber. What 
you do not want for use, you crave for ornament, 
and what your convenience could spare, your 
pride^ cannot.' 

On the other hand, precisely the defence which 
was set up for the British Constitution, namely, 
that with all its admitted defects, rotten boroughs 
and monopolies, it worked well, and substantial 
justice was somehow done ; the wisdom and the 
worth did get into parliament, and every interest 
did by right, or might, or sleight, get repre- 
sented; — the same defence is set up for the 
existing institutions. They are not the best; 



800 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

they are not just ; and in respect to you, per- 
sonally, O brave young man! they cannot be 
justified. They have, it is most true, left you 
no acre for your own, and no law but our law, 
to the ordaining of which you were no party. 
But they do answer the end, they are really 
friendly to the good; unfriendly to the bad. 
they second the industrious, and the kind ; the^ 
fostef genius. They really have so much flexi 
bUity as to afford your talent and character, on 
the whole, the same chance of demonstration 
and success which they might have, if there was 
no law and no property. 

It is trivial and merely superstitious to say 
that nothing is given you, no outfit, no exhibi- 
tion ; for in this institution of credit^ which is as 
universal as honesty and promise in the human 
countenance, always some neighbor stands ready 
to be bread and land and tools and stock to the 
young adventurer. And if in any one respect 
they have come short, see what ample retribu- 
tion of good they have made. They have lost 
no time and spared no expense to collect libra- 
ries, museums, galleries, colleges, palaces, hos- 
pitals, observatories, cities. The ages have not 
been idle, nor kings slack, nor the rich nig- 
gardly. Have we not atoned for this small 
offence (which we could not help) of leaving 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 301 

you no right in the soil, by this splendid indem- 
nity of ancestral and national wealth ? Would 
you have been born like a gipsy in a hedge, and 
preferred your freedom on a heath, and the 
range of a planet which had no shed or boscage 
to cover you from sun and wind, — to this tow- 
ered and citied world ? to this world of Rome, 
and Memphis, and Constantinople, and Vienna, 
and Paris, and London, and New York? For 
thee Naples, Florence, and Venice, for thee the 
fair Mediterranean, the sunny Adriatic: for thee 
both Indies smile ; for thee the hospitable North 
opens its heated palaces under the polar circle ; 
for thee roads have been cut in every direction 
across the land, and fleets of floating palaces with 
every security for strength, and provision for 
luxury, swim by sail and by steam through all 
the waters of. this world. Every island for thee 
has a town ; every town a hotel. Though thou 
wast born landless, yet to thy industry and 
thrift and small condescension to the established 
usage, — scores of servants are swarming in 
every strange place with cap and knee to thy 
command, scores, nay hundreds and thousands, 
for thy wardrobe, thy table, thy chamber, thy 
library, thy leisure ; and every whim is antici- 
pated and served by the best ability of the whole 
population of each country. The king on the 
26 



302 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

throne governs for thee, and the judge judges ; 
the barrister pleads ; the farmer tills, the joiner 
hammers, the postman rides. Is it not exagger- 
ating a trifle to insist on a formal acknowledg- 
ment of your claims, when these substantial 
advantages have been secured to you ? Now 
can your children be educated, your labor turned 
to their advantage, and its fruits secured to them 
after your death. It is frivolous to say, you have 
no acre, because you have not a mathematically 
measured piece of land. Providence takes care 
that you shaU have a place, that you are waited 
for, and come accredited ; and, as soon as you put 
your gift to use, you shall have acre or acre's 
worth according to your exhibition of desert, — 
acre, if you need land; — acre's worth, if you 
prefer to draw, or carve, or make shoes, or wheels, 
to the tilling of the soil. 

Besides, it might temper your indignation at 
the supposed wrong which society has done you, 
to keep the question before you, how society got 
into this predicament ? Who put things on this 
false basis? No single man^ but all men. No 
man voluntarily and knowingly; but it is the 
result of that degree of culture there is in the 
planet. The order of things is as good as the 
character of the population permits. Consider 
it as the work of a great and beneficent and pro- 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 303 

gressive necessity, which, from the first pulsation 
in the first animal life, up to the present high 
culture of the best nations, has advanced thus 
far. Thank the rude fostermother though she 
has taught you a better wisdom than her own, 
and has set hopes in your heart which shall be 
history in the next ages. You are yourself the 
result of this manner of living, this foul compro- 
mise, this vituperated Sodom. It nourished you 
with care and love on its breast, as it had nour- 
ished many a lover of the right, and many a 
poet, and prophet, and teacher of men. Is it so 
irremediably bad ? Then again, if the mitiga- 
tions are considered, do not aU the mischiefs 
virtually vanish? The form is bad, but see you 
not how every personal character reacts on the 
form, and makes it new ? A strong person makes 
the law and custom null before his own will. 
Then the principle of love and truth reappears 
in the strictest courts of fashion and property. 
Under the richest robes, in the darlings of the 
selectest circles of European or American aris- 
tocracy, the strong heart will beat with love of 
mankind, with impatience of accidental distinc- 
tions, with the desire to achieve its own fate, 
and make every ornament it wears authentic and 
real. 

Moreover, as we have already shown that there 



304 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

is no pure reformer, so it is to be considered that 
there is no pure conservative, no man who from 
the beginning to the end of his life maintains 
the defective institutions; but he who sets his 
face like a flint against every novelty, when 
approached in the confidence of conversation, in 
the presence of friendly and generous persons, 
has also his gracious and relenting moments, and 
espouses for the time the cause of man ; and 
even if this be a shortlived emotion, yet the 
remembrance of it in private hours mitigates his 
selfishness and compliance with custom. 

The Friar Bernard lamented in his cell on 
Mount Cenis the crimes of mankind, and rising 
one morning before day from his bed of moss 
and dry leaves, he gnawed his roots and berries, 
drank of the spring, and set forth to go to Rome 
to reform the corruption of manldnd. On his 
way he encountered many travellers who greeted 
him courteously ; and the cabins of the peasants 
and the castles of. the lords supplied his few 
wants. When he came at last to Rome, his 
piety and good will easily introduced him to 
many families of the rich, and on the first day 
he saw and talked with gentle mothers \Mtb 
their babes at their breasts, who told him how 
much love they bore their children, and hov 
they were perplexed in their daily walk lest the-^^ 



- THE CONSERVATIVE. 3a5 

should fail in their duty to them. ' "What !' he 
said, ' and this on rich embroidered carpets, on 
marble floors, with cunning sculpture, and carved 
wood, and rich pictures, and piles of books about 
you ? ' — ' Look at our pictures and books, they 
said, and we will tell you, good Father, how we 
spent the last evening. These are stories of 
godly children and holy families and romantic 
sacrifices made in old or in recent times by great 
and not mean persons; and last evening, our 
family was collected, and our husbands and 
brothers discoursed sadly on what we could save 
and give in the hard times.' Then came in the 
men, and they said, ' What cheer, brother ? 
Does thy convent want gifts ? ' Then the friar 
Bernard went home swiftly with other thoughts 
than he brought, saying, ' This way of life is 
wrong, yet these Romans, whom I prayed God 
to destroy, are lovers, they are lovers ; what can 
Ido?' 

The reformer concedes that these mitigations 
exist, and that, if he proposed comfort, he should 
take sides with the establishment. Your words 
are excellent, but they do not tell the whole. 
Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but 
there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe 
that they take somewhat for everything they give. 
I look bigger, but am less ; I have more clothes^ 
26* 



306 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

but am not so warm ; more armor, but less cou- 
rage ; more books, but less wit. What you say 
of your planted, builded and decorated world, 
is true enough, and I gladly avail myself of its 
convenience ; yet I have remarked that what 
holds in particular, holds in general, that the 
plant Man does not require for his most glorious 
flowering this pomp of preparation and conveni- 
ence, but the thoughts of some beggarly Homer 
who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy 
and barbarism of the old world ; the gravity and 
sense of some slave Moses who leads away his 
fellow slaves from their masters ; the contem- 
plation of some Scythian Anacharsis ; the erect, 
formidable valor of some Dorian townsmen in 
the town of Sparta; the vigor of Clovis the 
Frank, and Alfred the Saxon, and Alaric the 
Goth, and Mahomet, Ali, and Omar the Arabians, 
Saladin the Curd, and Othman the Turk, sufficed, 
to build what you call society, on the spot and 
in the instant when the sound mind in a sound 
body appeared. Rich and fine is your dress, O 
conservatism ! your horses are of the best blood ; 
your roads are well cut and well paved ; your 
pantry is full of meats and your cellar of wines, 
and a very good state and condition are you for 
gentlemen and ladies to live under ; but every 
one of these goods steals away a drop of my 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 307 

blood. I want the necessity of supplying my 
own wants. All this costly culture of yours is 
not necessary. Greatness does not need it. 
Yonder peasant, who sits neglected there in a 
corner, carries a whole revolution of man and 
nature in his head, which shall be a sacred his- 
tory to some future ages. For man is the end 
of nature ; nothing so easily organizes itself in 
every part of the universe as he ; no moss, no 
lichen is so easily born ; and he takes along with 
him and puts out from himself the whole appara- 
tus of society and condition extempore^ as an army 
encamps in a desert, and where all was just now 
blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a 
government, a market, a place for feasting, for 
conversation, and for love. 

These considerations, urged by those whose 
characters and whose fortunes are yet to be 
formed, must needs command the sympathy of 
aU reasonable persons. But beside that charity 
which should make all adult persons interested 
for the youth, and engage them to see that he 
has a free field and fair play on his entrance into 
life, we are bound to see that the society, of 
which we compose a part, does not permit the 
formation or continuance of views and practices 
injurious to the honor and welfare of mankind 
The objection to conservatism, when embodied 



808 THE CONSEEVATIVE. 

in a party-j is, that in its love of acts, it hates, 
principles; it lives in the senses, not in truth- 
it sacrifices to despair ; it goes for available- 
ness in its candidate, not for worth.; and for 
expediency in its measures, and not for the right. 
Under pretence of allowing for friction, it makes 
so many additions and supplements to the ma- 
chine of society, that it will play smoothly and 
softly, but will no longer grind any grist. 

The conservative party in the universe con- 
cedes that the radical would talk sufficiently to 
the purpose, if we were still in the garden of 
Eden ; he legislates for man as he ought to be ; 
his theory is right, but he makes no allowance 
for friction ; and this omission makes his whole 
doctrine false. The idealist retorts, that the con- 
servative falls into a far more noxious error in 
the other extreme. The conservative assumes 
sickness as a necessity, and his social frame 
is a hospital, his total legislation is for the pres- 
ent distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, 
with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and 
herb-tea. Sickness gets organized as well as 
health, the vice as well as the virtue. Now that 
a vicious system of trade has existed so long, it 
has stereotyped itself in the human generation, 
and misers are born. And now that sickness has 
got such a foothold, leprosy has grown cunning, 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 309 

ftas got into the ballot-box ; the lepers outvote 
the clean ; society has resolved itself into a Hos- 
pital Committee, and all its laws are quarantine. 
If any man resist, and set up a foolish hope he 
has entertained as good against the general de- 
spair, society frowns on him, shuts him out 
of her opportunities, her granaries, her refecto- 
ries, her water and brea'd, and will serve him a 
sexton's turn. Conservatism takes as low a 
view of every part of human action and pas- 
sion. Its religion is just as bad ; a , lozenge 
for the sick ; a dolorous tune to beguUe the 
distemper ; mitigations of pain by piUows and 
anodynes ; always mitigations, never remedies ; 
pardons for sin, funeral honors, — never self- 
help, renovation, and virtue. Its social and 
political action has no better aim ; to keep 
out wind and weather, to bring the week and 
year about, and make the world last our day ; 
not to sit on the world and steer it ; not to sink 
the memory of the past in the glory of a new 
and more excellent creation ; a timid cobbler and 
patch er, it degrades whatever it touches. The 
cause of education is m-ged in this country with 
the utmost earnestness, — on what ground? why 
on this, that the people have the power, and if 
they are not instructed to sympathize with the 
intelligent, reading, trading, and governing class, 



310 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

inspired with a taste for the same competitions 
and prizes, they will upset the fair pageant of 
Judicature, and perhaps lay a hand on the sacred 
muniments of wealth itself, and new distribute 
the land. Religion is taught in the same spirit. 
The contractors who were building a road out 
of Baltimore, some years ago, found the Irish 
laborers quarrelsome and refractory, to a degree 
that embarrassed the agents, and seriously inter- 
rupted the progress of the work. The corpora- 
tion were advised to call off the police, and build 
a Catholic chapel; which they did; the priest 
presently restored order, and the work went on 
prosperously. Such hints, be sure, are too valu- 
able to be lost. If you do not value the Sab- 
bath, or other religious institutions, give yourself 
no concern about maintaining them. They have 
already acquired a market value as conservators 
of property ; and if priest and church-member 
should fail, the chambers of commerce and the 
presidents of the Banks, the very innholders and 
landlords of the county would muster with fury 
to their support. 

Of course, religion in such hands loses its 
essence. Instead of that reliance, which the soul 
suggests on the eternity of truth and duty, men 
are misled into a reliance on institutions, which, 
the moment they cease to be the- instantaneous 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 811 

creations of the devout sentiment, are worthless. 
Religion among the low becomes low. As it 
loses its truth, it loses credit with the sagacious. 
They detect the falsehood of the preaching, but 
when they say so, all good citizens cry. Hush ; 
do not weaken the state, do not take off the 
strait jacket from dangerous persons. Every 
honest fellow must keep up the hoax the best he 
can ; must patronize providence and piety, and 
wherever he sees anything that will keep men 
amused, schools or churches or poetry, or pic- 
ture-galleries or music, or what not, he must cry 
*' Hist-a-boy," and urge the game on. What a 
compliment we pay to the good Spirit with our 
superserviceable zeal ! 

But not to balance reasons for and against the 
establishment any longer, and if it still be asked 
in this necessity of partial organization, which 
party on the whole has the highest claims on our 
sympathy ? I bring it home to the private heart, 
where aU such questions must have their final 
arbitrement. How will every strong and gen- 
erous mind choose its ground, — with the de- 
fenders of the old? or with the seekers of the 
new ? Which is that state which promises to 
^dify a great, brave, and beneficent man; to 
throw him on his resources, and tax the strength 
of his character ? On which part will each ol 



312 THE C0:5TSEIIVATIVE. 

US find himself in the hour of health and of 
aspiration ? 

I understand well the respect of mankind for 
war, because that breaks up the Chinese stagna- 
tion of society, and demonstrates the personal 
merits of all men. A state of war or anarchy, 
in which law has little force, is so far valuable, 
that it puts every man on trial. The man of 
principle is known as such, and even in the fury 
of faction is respected. In the civil wars of 
France, Montaigne alone, among all the French 
gentry, kept his castle gates unbarred, and made 
his personal integrity as good at least as a regi- 
ment. The man of courage and resources is 
shown, and the effeminate and base person. 
Those who rise above war, and those who fall 
below it, it easily discriminates, as well as those, 
who, accepting its rude conditions, keep their 
own head by their own sword. 

But in peace and a commercial state we de- 
pend, not as we ought, on our knowledge and 
all men's knowledge that we are honest men, 
but w^e cowardly lean on the virtue of others. 
For it is always at last the virtue of some men 
in the society, which keeps the law in any reve- 
rence and power. Is there not something shame- 
ful that I should owe my peaceful occupancy of 
my house and field, not to the knowledge of my 



THE CONSERVATIVE. 313 

countrymen that I am usefulj but to their respect 
for sundry other reputable persons, I laiow not 
whom, whose joint virtue still keep the law in 
good odor ? 

It will never make any difference to a hero 
what the laws are. His greatness will shine and 
accomplish itself unto the end, whether they 
second him or not. If he have earned his bread 
by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked 
ways which were all an evil law had left him, 
he will malvc it at least honorable by his expen- 
diture. Of the past he will take no heed ; for 
its wrongs he will not hold himself responsible : 
he will say, all the meanness of my progenitors 
shall not bereave me of the power to make this 
hour and company fair and fortunate. What- 
soever streams of power and commodity flow to 
me, shall of me acquke healing virtue, and be- 
come fountains of safety. Cannot I too descend 
a Redeemer into nature ? Whosover hereafter 
shall name my name, shall not record a malefac- 
tor, but a benefactor in the earth. If there be 
power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, 
tlie north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven 
shall glow with a kindlier beam, that I have 
lived. I am primarily engaged to myself to be 
a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate 
to aU men that there is intelligence and good 
27 



314 THE CONSERVATIVE. 

will at the heart of things, and ever high(»r and 
yet higher leadings. These are my engage- 
ments ; how can your law further or hinder me 
in what I shall do to men ? On the other hand, 
these dispositions establish their relations to me. 
Wherever there is worth, I shall be greeted. 
"Wherever there are men, are the objects of my 
study and love. Sooner or later all men will be 
my Mends, and will testify in all methods the 
energy of their regard. I cannot thank your law 
for my protection. I protect it. It is not in its 
power to protect me. It is my business to make 
myself revered. I depend on my honor, my 
labor, and my dispositions, for my place in the 
affections of manldnd, and not on any conven- 
tions or parchments of yours. 

But if I allow myself in derelictions, and be- 
come idle and dissolute, I quickly come to love 
the protection of a strong law, because I feel no 
title in myself to my advantages. To the intem- 
perate and covetous person no love flows ; to 
him mankind would pay no rent, no dividend, if 
force were once relaxed ; nay, if they could give 
their verdict, they would say, that his self- 
indulgence and his oppression deserved punish- 
ment from society, and not that rich board and 
lodging he now enjoys. The law acts then as a 
screen of his unworthiness, and makes him worse 
the longer it protects him. 



THE CONSEKVATIVE. 815 

In conclusion, to return from this alternation 
of partial views, to the high platform of univer- 
sal and necessary history, it is a happiness for 
mankind that innovation has got on so far, and 
has so free a field before it. The boldness of 
the hope men entertain transcends all former 
experience. It calms and cheers them with the 
picture of a simple and equal life of truth and 
piety. And this hope flowered on what tree? 
It was not imported from the stock of some 
celestial plant, but grew here on the wild crab 
of conservatism. It is much that this old and 
vituperated system of things has borne so fair a 
child. It predicts that amidst a planet peopled 
with conservatives, one Reformer may yet be 
bora. 



THE TEANSCENDENTALIST. 



A LECTUBU BEAD AT THE MASONIC TEMPLE, BOSTON, JANUABT 

1842. 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 



The first thing we have to say respecting 
what are called new views here in New England, 
at the present time, is, that they are not new, 
but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the 
mould of these new times. The light is always 
identical in its composition, but it falls on a great 
variety of objects, and by so falling is first re- 
vealed to us, not in its own form, for it is form- 
less, but in theirs ; in like manner, thought only 
appears in the objects it classifies. What is 
popularly called Transcendentalism among us, 
is Idealism ; Idealism as it appears in 1842. As 
thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two 
sects, Materialists and Idealists ; the first class 
founding on experience, the second on conscious- 
ness ; the first class beginning to think from the 
data of the senses, the second class perceive that 
the senses are not final, and say, the senses give 



320 THE TRANSCE^^DENTALIST. 

US representations of things, but what are the 
things themselves, they cannot tell. The mate- 
rialist insists on facts, on histor}^, on the force 
of cncumstances, and the animal wants of'man ; 
the idealist on the power of Thought and of 
Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual 
culture. These two modes of thinking are both 
natural, but the idealist contends that his way of 
thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all 
that the other affirms, admits the impressions of 
sense, admits their coherency, their use and 
beauty, and then asks the materialist for his 
grounds of assurance that things are as his senses 
represent them. But I, he says, affirm facts not 
affected by the illusions of sense, facts which are 
of the same nature as the faculty which reports 
them, and not liable to doubt; facts which in 
their first appearance to us assume a native supe- 
riority to material facts, degrading these into a 
language by which the first are to be spoken ; 
facts which it only needs a retirement from the 
senses to discern. Every materialist will be an 
idealist ; but an idealist can never go backward 
to be a materialist. 

The idealist, in speaking of events, sees them 
as spirits. .He does not deny the sensuous fact: 
by no means; but he will not see that alone. 
He does not deny the presence of this table, this 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 821 

chair, and the walls of this room, but he looks 
at these things as the reverse side of the tapes- 
try, as the other end^ each being a sequel or com- 
pletion of a spiritual fact which nearly concerns 
him. This manner of looking at things, trans- 
fers every object in nature from an independent 
and anomalous position without there, into the 
consciousness. Even the materialist Condillac, 
perhaps the most logical expounder of material- 
ism, was constrained to say, " Though we should 
soar into the heavens, though we should sink 
into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves ; it 
is always our own thought that we perceive." 
What more could an idealist say ? 

The materialist, secure in the certainty of sen- 
sation, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers 
and dreamers, and believes that his life is solid, 
that he at least takes nothing for granted, but 
knows where he stands, and what he does. Yet 
how easy it is to show him, that he also is a 
phantom walking and working amid phantoms, 
and that he need only ask a question or two 
beyond his daily questions, to find his solid 
universe growing dim and impalpable before his 
sense. The sturdy capitalist, no matter how 
deep and square on blocks of Quincy granite he 
lays the foundations of his banldng-house, or 
Exchange, must set it, at last, not on a cube 



322 THE TRANSCENDEITTALIST. 

corresponding to the angles of his structure, but 
on a mass of unknown materials and solidity, 
red-hot or white-hot, perhaps at the core, which 
rounds off to an almost perfect sphericity, and 
lies floating in soft air, and goes spinning aw^ay, 
dragging bank and banker with it at a rate of 
thousands of miles the hour, he knows not 
whither, — a bit of bullet, now glimmering, now 
darkling through a small cubic space on the edge 
of an unimaginable pit of emptiness. And this 
wild balloon, in which his whole venture is em- 
barked, is a just symbol of his whole state and 
faculty. One thing, at least, he says is certain, 
and does not give me the headache, that figures 
do not lie; the multiplication table has been 
hitherto found unimpeachable truth ; and, more- 
over, if I put a gold eagle in my safe, I find it 
again to-morrow; — but for these thoughts, I 
know not whence they are. They change and 
pass away. But ask him why he believes that 
an uniform experience will continue uniform, or 
on what grounds he founds his faith in his fig- 
ures, and he will perceive that his mental fabric 
is built up on just as strange and quaking foun- 
dations as his proud edifice of stone. 

In the order of thought, the materialist takes 
his departure from the external world, and es- 
teems a man as one product of that. The idealist 



THE TRANSCEKDENTALIST. 323 

takes his departure from his consciousness, and 
reckons the world an appearance. The mate- 
rialist respects sensible masses, Society, Govern- 
ment, social art, and luxury, every establishment, 
every mass, whether majority of numbers, or 
extent of space, or amount of objects, every so- 
cial action. The idealist has another measure, 
which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which 
things themselves take in his consciousness ; not 
at all, the size or appearance. Mind is the only 
reality, of which men and all other natures are 
better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, 
history, are only subjective phenomena. Al- 
though in his action overpowered by the laws 
of action, and so, warmly cooperating with men, 
even preferring them to himself, yet when he 
speaks scientifically, or after the order of thought, 
he is constrained to degrade persons into repre- 
sentatives of truths. He does not respect labor, 
or the products of labor, namely, property, other- 
wise than as a manifold symbol, illustrating with 
wonderful fidelity of details the laws of being ; 
he does not respect government, except as far as 
it reiterates the law of his mind ; nor the church : 
nor charities ; nor arts, for themselves ; but hears, 
as at a vast distance, what they say, as if his 
consciousness would speak to him through a 
pantomimic scene. His thought, — that is the 



324 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 

Universe. His experience inclines him to be- 
hold the procession of facts you call the world, 
as flowing perpetually outward from an invisi- 
ble, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of 
him and of them, and necessitating him to re* 
gard all things as having a subjective or relative 
existence, relative to that aforesaid Unknown 
Centre of him. 

From this transfer of the world into the con- 
sciousness, this beholding of all things in the 
mind, follow easily his whole ethics. It is sim- 
pler to be self-dependent. The height, the de- 
ity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no 
gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it 
does not violate me ; but best when it is likest 
to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. 
Everything divine shares the self-existence of 
Deity. All that you call the world is the sha- 
dow of that substance which you are, the per- 
petual creation of the powers of thought, of those 
that are dependent and of those that are inde- 
pendent of your will. Do not cumber yourself 
with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote 
effects ; let the soul be erect, and all things will 
go well. You think me the child of my cir- 
cumstances : I make my circumstance. Let 
any thought or motive of mine be different 
from that they are, the difTerence will transforna 



THE TUANSCENDENTALIST. 825 

my condition and economy. I — this thought 
which is called I, — is the mould into which the 
world is pom-ed like melted wax. The mould 
is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of 
the mould. You call it the power of circum- 
stance, but it is the power of me. Am I in 
harmony with myself? my position will seem to 
you just and commanding. Am I vicious and 
insane ? my fortunes will seem to you obscure 
and descending. , As I am, so shall I associate, 
and, so shall I act; Caesar's history will paint 
out Caesar. Jesus acted so, because he thought 
so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any 
reality ; I say, I make my circumstance : but if 
you ask me. Whence am I? I feel like other 
men my relation to that Fact which cannot be 
spoken, or defined, nor even thought, but which 
exists, and will exist. 

The Transcendentalist a,dopts the whole con- 
nection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in 
miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human 
mind to new influx of light and power ; he be- 
lieves in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes 
that the spiritual principle should be suffered to 
demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible 
applications to the state of man, without the 
admission of anything unspiritual ; that is, any- 
thing positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the 
28 



826 THE TRAInTSCEXDENTALIST. 

spiritual rneasure of inspiration is the depth of 
the thought, and never, who said it ? And so he 
resists all attempts to palm other rules and meas- 
ures on the spirit than its own. 

In action, he easily incurs the charge of anti- 
nomianism by his avowal that he, who has the 
Lawgiver, may with safety not only neglect, but 
even contravene every written commandment. 
In the play of Othello, the expiring Desdemona 
absolves her husband of the murder, to her 
attendant Emilia. Afterwards, when Emilia 
charges him with the crime, OtheUo exclaims, 

" You beard her say herself it was not I." 

Emilia replies, 

" The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil." 

Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Transcend- 
ental moralist, makes use, with other parallel 
instances, in his reply to Fichte. Jacobi, re- 
fusing all measure of right and wrong except 
the determinations of the private spirit, remarks 
that there is no crime but has sometimes 
been a virtue. " I," he says, " am that atheist, 
that godless person who, in opposition to an 
imaginary doctrine of calculation, would lie as 
the dying Desdemona lied ; would lie and de- 
ceive, as Pylades when he personated Orestes; 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 327 

would assassinate like Timoleon ; would perjure 
myself like Epaminondas, and John de Witt ; I 
would resolve on suicide like Cato ; I would 
commit sacrilege with David ; yea, and pluck 
ears of corn on the Sabbath, for no other reason 
than that I was fainting for lack of food. For, 
I have assurance in myself, that, in pardoning 
these faults according to the letter, man exerts 
the sovereign right which the majesty of his 
being confers on him; he sets the seal of his 
divine nature to the grace he accords." * 

In like manner, if there is anything grand and 
daring in human thought or virtue, any reliance 
on the vast, the unknown ; any presentiment ; 
any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist adopts 
it as most in nature. The oriental mind has 
always tended to this largeness. Buddhism is 
an expression of it. The Buddhist who thanks 
no man, who says, " do not flatter your benefac- 
tors," but who, in his conviction that every good 
deed can by no possibility escape its reward, 
will not deceive the benefactor by pretending 
that he has done more than he should, is a 
Transcendentalist. 

You will see by this sketch that there is no 
such thing as a Transcendental ^ar^y ; that there 

* Coleridge's Translation. 



828 TKE TRANSCENDEI^TALIST. 

is no pure Transcendentalist ; that we know of 
none but prophets and heralds of such a phi- 
losophy ; that all who by strong bias of nature 
have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have 
stopped short of their goal. We have had many 
harbingers and forerunners ; but of a purely 
spiritual life, history has afforded no example. 
I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned 
entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food ; 
who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made 
of miracles ; who, working for universal aims 
found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, 
sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and 
yet it was done by his own hands. Only in the 
instinct of the lower animals, we find the sugges- 
tion of the methods of it, and something higher 
than our understanding. The squirrel hoards 
nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without know- 
ing what they do, and they are thus provided for 
without selfishness or disgrace. 

Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is 
the Saturnalia or excess of Faith ; the presenti- 
ment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, 
excessive only when his imperfect obedience 
hinders the satisfaction of his wish. Nature is 
transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever 
works and advances, yet takes no thought for 
the morrow. Man owns the dignity of the life 



THE TRANSCEK'DENTALIST. 329 

cs/hich throbs around him in chemistry, and tree, 
and animal, and in the involuntary functions of 
his own body ; yet he is balked when he tries 
to fling himself into this enchanted circle, where 
all is done without degradation. Yet genius 
and virtue predict in man the same absence of 
private ends, and of condescension to circum- 
stances, united with every trait and talent of 
beauty and power. 

This way of thinking, falling on Roman times, 
made Stoic philosophers ; falling on despotic 
times, made patriot Catos and Brutuses '; falling 
on superstitious times, made prophets and apos- 
tles ; on popish times, made protestants and 
ascetic monks, preachers of Faith against the 
preachers of Works ; on prelatical times, made 
Puritans and Quakers ; and falling on Unitarian 
and commercial times, makes the peculiar shades 
of Idealism which we know^ 

It is well known to most of my audience, that 
the Idealism of the present day acquired the 
name of Transcendental, from the use of that 
term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who 
replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, 
w^hich insisted that there was nothing in the 
intellect which was not previously in the expe- 
rience of the senses, by showing that there was 
a very important class of ideas, or imperative 
28* 



S30 THE TEANSCENDENTALIST. 

forms, which did not come by experience, but 
through which experience was acquired; that 
-hese were intuitions of the mind itself ; and he 
denominated them Transcendental forms. The 
extraordinary profoundness and precision of that 
man's thinking have given vogue to his nomen- 
clature, in Europe and America, to that extent, 
that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive 
thought, is popularly called at the present day 
Transcendental. 

Although, as we have said, there is no pure 
Transcendentalist, yet the tendency to respect 
the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our 
creed, all authority over our experience, has 
deeply colored the conversation and poetry of 
the present day ; and the history of genius and 
of religion in these times, though impure, and 
as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, 
will be the history of this tendency. 

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the 
coarsest observer, that many intelligent and re- 
ligious persons withdraw themselves from the 
common labors and competitions of the market 
and the caucus, and betake themselves to a cer- 
tain solitary and critical way of living, from 
which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify 
their separation. They hold themselves aloof: 
they feel the disproportion between their facul* 



THE TEANSCE]n)ENTALIST. S31 

ties and the work offered them, and they prefer 
to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to 
the degradation of such charities and such ambi- 
tions as the city can propose to them. They 
are striking work, and crying out for somewhat 
worthy to do! What they do, is done only 
because they are overpowered by the humanities 
that speak on all sides ; and they consent to 
such labor as is open to them, though to their 
lofty dream the writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or 
the building of cities or empires seems drudgery. 
Now every one must do after his kind, be he 
asp or angel, and these must. The question, 
which a wise man and a student of modern his- 
tory will ask, is, what that kind is ? And truly, 
as in ecclesiastical history we take so much pains 
to know what the Gnostics, what the Essenes, 
what the Manichees, and what the Reformers 
believed, it would not misbecome us to inquire 
nearer home, what these companions and con- 
temporaries of ours think and do, at least so far 
as these thoughts and actions appear to be not 
accidental and personal, but common to many, 
and the inevitable flower of the Tree of Time. 
Our American literature and spiritual history are, 
we confess, in the optative mood ; but whoso 
knows these seething brains, these admirable 
radicals, these unsocial worshippers, these talkers 



332 THE TRANSCENDEliTTALIST. 

who talk the sun and moon away, will believe 
that this heresy cannot pass away without leav- 
ing its mark. 

They are lonely; the spirit of their writing 
and conversation is lonely ; they repel influences ; 
they shun general society ; they incline to shut 
themselves in their chamber in the house, to live 
in the country rather than in the town, and to 
find their tasks and amusements in solitude. 
Society, to be sure, does not like this very well ; 
it saith. Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the 
whole world ; he declareth all to be unfit to be 
his companions ; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting ; 
Society w^ill retaliate. Meantime, this retirement 
does not proceed fi*om any whim on the part of 
these separators ; but if any one will take pains 
to talk with them, he will find that this part is 
chosen both from temperament and from princi- 
ple ; with some unwillingness, too, and as a 
choice of the less of two evils ; for these persons 
are not by nature melancholy, sour, and unso- 
cial, — they are not stockish or brute, — but 
joyous; susceptible, affectionate ; they have 
even more than others a great wish to be loved. 
Like the young Mozart, they are rather ready to 
cry ten times a day, " But are you sm-e you 
love me ? " Nay, if they tell you their whole 
thought, they will own that love seems to them 



THE TRAJ^CENDENTALIST. 833 

the last and highest gift of nature ; that there 
are persons whom in their hearts they daily- 
thank for existing, — persons whose faces are 
perhaps unknown to them, but whose fame and 
spirit have penetrated their solitude, — and for 
whose sake they wish to exist. To behold the 
beauty of another character, which inspires a 
new interest in om- own ; to behold the beauty 
lodged in a human being, with such vivacity of 
apprehension, that I am instantly forced home to 
inquire if I am not deformity itself: to behold in 
another the expression of a love so high that it 
assures itself, — assures itself also to me against 
every possible casualty except my unworthi- 
ness ; — these are degrees on the scale of human 
happiness, to which they have ascended ; and it 
is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made 
common association distasteful to them. They 
wish a just and even fellowship, or none. They 
cannot gossip with you, and they do not wish, 
as they are sincere and religious, to gratify any 
mere curiosity which you may entertain. Like 
fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of. Love 
me, they say, but do not ask who is my cousin 
and my uncle. K you do not need to hear my 
thought, because you can read it in my face and 
behavior, then 1 will tell it you from sunrise to 
sunset If you cannot divine it, you would 



334 THE TBANSCEIN'DENTALIST. 

not understand what I say. I will not molest 
myself for you. I do not wish to be profaned. 

And yet, it seems as if this loneliness, and 
not this love, would prevail in their circum- 
stances, because of the extravagant demand they 
make on human nature. That, indeed, con- 
stitutes a new feature in their portrait, that they 
are the most exacting and extortionate critics. 
Their quarrel with every man they meet, is not 
with his kind, but with his degree. There is 
not enough of him, — that is the only fault. 
They prolong their privilege of childhood in this 
wise, of doing nothing, — but making immense^ 
demands on all the gladiators in the lists of action 
and fame. They make us feel the strange dis- 
appointment which overcasts every human youth. 
So many promising youths, and never a finished 
man ! The profound nature will have a savage 
rudeness ; the delicate one will be shallow, or 
the victim of sensibility; the richly accom- 
plished will have some capital absurdity ; and so 
every piece has a crack. 'Tis strange, but this 
masterpiece is the result of such an extreme deli- 
cacy, that the most unobserved flaw in the boy 
will neutralize the most aspiring genius, and 
spoil the work. Talk with a seaman of the 
hazards to life in his profession, and he will ask 
you, " Where are the old sailors ? do you not see 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 335 

that all are young men ? " And we, on this sea 
of human thought, in Kke manner inquire. Where 
are the old idealists ? where are they who repre- 
sented to the last generation that extravagant 
hope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to 
ours ? In looking at the class of counsel, and 
power, and wealth, and at the matronage of the 
land, amidst all the prudence and all tlie trivi- 
ality, one asks. Where are they who represented 
genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly world, 
to these ? Are they dead, — taken in early ripe- 
ness to the gods, — as ancient wisdom foretold 
their fate ? Or did the high idea die out of them, 
and leave their unperfumed body as its tomb and 
tablet, announcing to all that the celestial inhabi- 
tant, who once gave them beauty, had departed ? 
Will it be better with the new generation ? We 
easily predict a fair future to each new candidate 
who enters the lists, but we are . frivolous and 
volatile, and by low aims and ill example do 
what we can to defeat this hope. Then these 
youths bring us a rough but effectual aid. By 
their unconcealed dissatisfaction, they expose 
our poverty, and the insignificance of man to 
man. A man is a poor limitary benefactor. He 
ought to be a shower of benefits — a great influ- 
ence, which should never let his brother go, but 
should refresh old merits continually with new 



836 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 

ones ; so that, though absent, he should never 
be out of my mind, his name never far from my 
lips ; but if the earth should open at my side, or 
my last hour were come, his name' should be the 
prayer I should utter to the Universe. But in 
our experience, man is cheap, and friendship 
wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with 
our friends in their absence, but we do not ; 
when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let 
us go. These exacting children advertise us of 
our wants. There is no compliment, no smooth 
speech with them ; they pay you only this one 
compliment, of insatiable expectation ; they as- 
pire, they severely exact, and if they only stand 
fast in this watch-tower, and persist in demand- 
ing unto the end, and without end, then are they 
terrible friends, whereof poet and priest cannot 
choose but stand in awe ; and what if they eat 
clouds, and drink wind, they have not been 
without service to the race of man. 

With this passion for what is great and extra- 
ordinary, it cannot be wondered at, that they are 
repelled by vulgarity and frivolity in people. 
They say to themselves. It is better to be alone 
than in bad company. And it is really a wish 
to be met, — the wish to find society for their 
hope and' religion, — which prompts them to 
shun what is called society. They feel that they 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 337 

are never so fit for friendship, as when they have 
quitted mankind, and taken themselves to friend. 
A picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or 
the woods, which they can people Vvath the fair 
and worthy creation of the fancy, can give them 
often forms so vivid, that these for the time 
shall seem real, and society the illusion. 

But their solitary and fastidious manners not 
only withdraw them from the conversation, but 
from the labors of the world ; they are not good 
citizens, not good members" of society; unwil- 
lingly they bear their part of the public and 
private burdens ; they do not willingly share 
in the public charities, in the public religious 
rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions 
foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the 
slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They 
do not even like to vote. The philanthropists 
inquire w^iether Transcendentalism does not 
mean sloth : they had as lief hear that their 
friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendental- 
ist ; for then is he paralyzed, and can never 
do anything for humanity. "What right, cries 
the good world, has the man of genius to 
retreat from work, and indulge himself? The 
popular literary creed seems to be, ' I am a sub- 
lime genius ; I ought not therefore to labor.' 
But genius is the power to labor better and 
29 



838 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 

more availably. Desen^e thy genius : exaii 
it. The good, the illuminated, sit apart from 
the rest, censuring thek dulness and vices, as 
if they thought that, by sitting very grand in 
their chairs, the very brokers, attorneys, and 
congressmen would see the error of their ways, 
and flock to them. But the good and wise must 
learn to act, and carry salvation to the com- 
batants and demagogues in the dusty arena 
below. 

On the part of these children, it is replied, that 
life and their faculty seem to them gifts too rich 
to be squandered on such trifles as you propose 
to them. What you call your fundamental in- 
stitutions, your great and holy causes, seem to 
them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry 
matters. Each ' Cause,' as it is called, — say 
Abolition, Temperance, say Calvinism, or Unita- 
rianism, — becomes speedily a little shop, where 
the article, let it have been at first never so sub- 
tle and ethereal, is now made up into portable 
and convenient cakes, and retailed in small 
quantities to suit purchasers. You make very 
free use of these words ' great ' and ' holy,' but 
few things appear to them such. Few persons 
have any magnificence of nature to inspire en- 
thusiasm, and the philanthropies and charities 
have a certain air of quackery. As to the genera] 



THE TRANSCENDEISTTALIST. 339 

course of living, and the daily employments of 
men, they cannot see much virtue in these, since 
they are parts of this vicious circle ; and, as no 
great ends are answered by the men, there is 
nothing noble in the arts by which they are 
maintained. Nay, they have made the experi- 
ment, and found that, from the liberal profes 
sions to the coarsest manual labor, ^and from 
the courtesies of the academy and the college to 
the conventions of the cotillon-room and the 
morning call, there is a spirit of cowardly com- 
promise and seeming, which intimates a fright- 
ful skepticism, a life without love, and an activ- 
ity without an aim. 

Unless the action is necessary, unless it is 
adequate, I -do not wish to perform it. I do not 
wish to do one thing but once. I do not love 
routine. Once possessed of the principle, it is 
equally easy to make four or forty thousand ap- 
plications of it. A great man will be content 
to have indicated in any the slightest manner 
his perception of the reigning Idea of his time, 
and will leave to those who like it the multipli- 
cation of examples. When he has hit the white, 
the rest may shatter the target. Every thing ad- 
monishes us how needlessly long life is. Every 
moment of a hero so raises and cheers us, that 
a twelvemonth is an age. All that the brave 



840 THE TRANSCEin)E^^TALIST. 

Xanthus brings home from his wars, is the recol- 
lection that, at the storming of Samos, "in the 
heat of the battle, Pericles smiled on me, and 
passed on to another detachment." It is the qual- 
ity of the moment, not the number of days, of 
events, or of actors, that imports. 

New, we confess, and by no means happy, is 
our condition : if you want the aid of our labor, 
we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. 
We are miserable with inaction. We perish of 
rest and rust : but we do not like your work. 

' Then,' says the world, ' show me your own.' 

* We have none.' 

* What will you do, then? ' cries the world. 
' We will wait.' 

' How long ? ' 

* Until the Universe beckons and calls us to 
work.' 

' But whilst you wait, you grow old and use- 
less.' 

'Be it so : I can sit in a corner and perish, (as 
you call it,) but I will not move until I have the 
hi£rhest command. If no call should come for 
years, for centuries, then I know that the want 
of the Universe is the attestation of faith by my 
abstinence. Your virtuous projects, so called, 
do not cheer me. I know that v/Wch shall come 
will cheer me. If I cannot work at least I need 



THE TRANSCENBEN-TALIST. 341 

not lie. All that is clearly due to-day is not to 
lie. In othei places, other men have encoun- 
tered sharp trials, and have behaved themselves 
well. The martyrs were sawn asunder, or hung 
alive on meat-hooks. Cannot we screw our 
courage to patience and truth, and without com- 
plaint, or even with good-humor, await our turn 
of action in the Infinite Counsels ? ' 

But, to come a little closer to the secret of 
these persons, we must say, that to them it 
seems a very easy matter to answer the objec- 
tions of the man of the world, but not so easy to 
dispose of the doubts and objections that occur 
to themselves. They are exercised in their own 
spirit with queries, which acquaint them with all 
adversity, and with the trials of the bravest 
heroes. When I asked them concerning their 
private experience, they answered somewhat in 
this wise : It is not to 1 e denied that there must 
be some wide difference between my faith and 
other faith ; and mine is a certain brief experi- 
ence, which surprised me in the highway or in 
the market, in some place, at some time, — 
whether in the body or out of the body, God 
knoweth, — and made me aware that I had 
played the fool with fools all this time, but that 
law existed for me and for all ; that to me be- 
longed trust, a child's trust and obedience, and the 
29* 



842 THE ^ TRANSCENDENTALIST. 

\;vorship r>f ideas, and I should never be fool more. 
Well, in the space of an hour, probably, I was 
let down from this height; I was at my old 
tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society. 
My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep 
world ; I ask. When shall I die, and be relieved 
of the responsibility of seeing an Universe which 
I do not use ? I wish to exchange this flash-of- 
lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever- 
glow for a benign climate. 

These two states of thought diverge every 
moment, and stand in wild contrast. To him 
who looks at his life from these moments of illu- 
mination, it will seem that he skulks and plays 
a mean, shiftless, and subaltern part in the world. 
That is to be done which he has not skill to do, 
or to be said which others can say better, and 
he lies by, or occupies his hands with some play- 
thing, until his hour comes again. Much of 
our reading, much of our labor, seems mere 
w^aiting : it was not that we were born for. Any 
other could do it as well, or better. So little 
skiU enters into these works, so little do they 
mix with the divine life, that it really signifies 
little what we do, whether we turn a grind- 
stone, or ride, or run, or make fortunes, or 
govern the state. The worst feature of this 
double consciousness is, that the two lives, of 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 343 

the understanding and of the soul, which we 
lead, really show very little relation to each 
other, never meet and measure each other : 
one prevails now, all buzz and din ; and the 
other prevails then, all infinitude and para- 
dise; and, with the progress of life, the two 
discover no greater disposition to reconcile them- 
selves. Yet, what is my faith? What am I? 
What but a thought of serenity and indepen- 
dence, an abode in the deep blue sky ? Presently 
the clouds shut down again ; yet we retain the 
belief that this petty web we weave will at last 
be overshot and reticulated with veins of the " 
blue, and that the moments will characterize the 
days. Patience, then, is for us, is it not ? Pa- 
tience, and still patience. When we pass, as 
presently we shall, into some new infinitude, out 
of this Iceland of negations, it will please us to 
reflect that, though we had few virtues or con- 
solations, we bore with our indigence, nor once 
strove to repair it with hypocrisy or false heat of 
any kind. 

But this class are not sufficiently characterized, 
if we omit to add that they are lovers and wor- 
shippers of Beauty. In the eternal trinity of 
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in its per- 
fection including the three, they prefer to make 
Beauty the sign and head. Something of the 



844 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 

same taste is observable in all the moral move- 
ments 'of the time, in the religious and benevo- 
lent enterprises. They have a liberal, even an 
iEsthetic spirit. A reference to Beauty in action 
sounds, to be sure, a little hollow and ridiculous 
in the ears of the old church. In politics, it has 
often sufficed, when they treated of justice, if 
they kept the bounds of selfish calculation. K 
they granted restitution, it was prudence w^hich 
granted it. But the justice which is now claimed 
for the black, and the pauper, and the drunkard 
is for Beauty, — is for a necessity to the soul of 
the agent, not of the beneficiary. I say, this is 
the tendency, not yet the realization. Our vir- 
tue totters and trips, does not yet walk firmly. 
Its representatives are austere ; they preach and 
denounce ; their rectitude is not yet a grace. 
They are still liable to that slight taint of bur- 
lesque which, in our strange world, attaches to 
the zealot. A saint should be as dear as the 
apple of the eye. Yet we are tempted to smile^ 
and we flee from the working to the speculative 
reformer, to escape that same slight ridicule. 
Alas for these days of derision and criticism ! 
We call the Beautiful the highest, because it 
appears to us the golden mean, escaping the 
dowdiness of the good, and the heartlessness of 
the true. — They are lovers of nature also, and 



THE TIlANSCE2n)E]5^TALIST. 845 

find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the 
world for the violated order and grace of man. 

There is, no doubt, a great deal of well-founded 
objection to be spoken or felt against the sajdngs 
and doings of this class, some of whose traits we 
have selected ; no doubt, they will lay themselves 
open to criticism and to lampoons, and as ridicu- 
lous stories will be to be told of them as of any 
There will be cant and pretension ; there will 
be subtilty^ and moonshine. These persons are 
of unequal strength, and do not all prosper. 
They complain that everything around them 
must be denied ; and if feeble, it takes all their 
strength to deny, before they can begin to lead 
their own life. Grave seniors insist on their 
respect to this institution, and that usage ; to an 
obsolete history; to some vocation, or college, 
or etiquette, or beneficiary, or charity, or morning 
or evening call, which they resist, as what does 
not concern them. But it costs such sleepless 
nights, alienations and misgivings, — they have 
BO many moods about it ; — these old guar 
dians never change their minds ; they have bul 
one mood on the subject, namely, that Antonj 
is very perverse, — that it is quite as much a* 
Antony can do, to assert his rights, abstain from 
what he thinks foolish, and keep his temper. 
He cannot help the reaction of this injustice in 



346 . THE TRANSCEXDENTALIST. 

his own mind. He is braced-up and stilted ; all 
freedom and flowing genius, all sallies of wit and 
frolic nature are quite out of the question ; it is 
well if lie can keep from lying, injustice, and 
suicide. This is no time for gaiety and grace. 
His strength and spirits are wasted in rejection. 
But the strong spirits overpower those around 
them without effort. Their thought and emo- 
tion comes in like a flood, quite withdraws them 
from all notice of these carping critics; they 
surrender themselves with glad heart to the 
heavenly guide, and only by implication reject 
the clamorous nonsense of the hour. Grave 
seniors talk to the deaf, — church and old book 
mumble and ritualize to an unheeding, preoccu- 
pied and advancing mind, and thus they by 
happiness of greater momentum lose no time, 
but take the right road at first. 

But all these of whom I speak are not profi- 
cients ; they are novices ; they only show the road 
in w^hich man should travel, when the soul has 
greater health and prowess. Yet let them feel 
the dignity of their charge, and deserve a larger 
power. Their heart is the ark in which the fire 
is concealed, which shall burn in a broader and 
universal flame. Let them obey the Genius 
then most when his impulse is wildest; then 
most when he seems to lead to uninhabitable 



THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. 347 

desarts of thought and life ; for the path which 
the hero travels alone is the highway of health 
and benefit to mankind. What is the privilege 
and nobility of our nature, but its persistency, 
through its power to attach itself to what is per- 
manent ? 

Society also has its duties in reference to this 
class, and must behold them with what charity 
it can. Possibly some benefit may yet accrue 
from them to the state. In our Mechanics' Fair, 
there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpen- 
ters' planes, and baking troughs, but also some 
few finer instruments, — rain gauges, thermom- 
eters, and telescopes ; and in society, besides 
farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a 
few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges 
and meters of character ; persons of a fine, de- 
tecting instinct, who note the smallest accumu- 
lations of wit and feeling in the bystander. 
Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters 
and monitors ; collectors of the heavenly spark 
with power to convey the electricity to others. 
Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks the 
firigate or ' line packet ' to learn its longitude, so 
it may not be without its advantage that we 
should now and then encounter rare and gifted 
men, to compara the points of our spiritual 
compass, and verify our bearings from superior 
chronometers. 



848 THE THANSCENDENTALIST. 

Amidst the downward tendency and pronenes3 
of things, when every voice is raised for a new 
road or another statute, or a subscription of stock, 
for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry, for 
a new house or a larger business, for a political 
party, or the division of an estate, — will you 
not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the 
land, speaking for thoughts and principles not 
marketable or perishable ? Soon these improve- 
ments and mechanical inventions will be super- 
seded ; these modes of living lost out of mem- 
ory ; these cities rotted, ruined by war, by new 
inventions, by new seats of trade, or the geologic 
changes: — all gone, like the shells wliich sprin- 
kle the seabeach with a white colony to-day, 
forever renewed to be forever destroyed. But 
the thoughts which these few hermits strove to 
proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not 
only by what they did, but by what they forbore 
to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to re- 
organize themselves in nature, to invest them- 
selves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed 
and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union 
with the surrounding system. 



THE YOUNG AMEEICAN. . 

▲ LECTURE READ BEFORE THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSO- 
CIATION, BOSTON, FEBBUART 7, 1844. 



THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 



Gentlemen : 

It is remarkable, that our people have their 
intellectual culture firom one country, and their 
duties from another. This false state of things 
is newly in a way to be corrected. America is 
beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the 
imagination of her children, and Europe is re- 
ceding in the same degree. This their reaction 
on education gives a new importance to the in- 
ternal improvements and to the politics of the 
country. Who has not been stimulated to re- 
flection by the facilities now in progress of con- 
struction for travel and the transportation of 
goods in the United States ? 

This rage of road building is beneficent for 
America, where vast distance is so main a con- 
sideration in our domestic politics and trade, 
inasmuch as the great political promise of the 



852 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose 
days seemed akeady numbered by the mere 
inconvenience of transporting representatives, 
judges, and officers across such tedious dis- 
tances of land and water. Not only is distance 
annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive 
and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot 
every day across the thousand various threads 
of national descent and employment, and bind 
them fast in one web, an hourly assimilation 
goes forward, and there is no danger that local 
peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved. 

1. But I hasten to speak of the utility of these 
improvements in creating an American senti- 
ment. An unlooked for consequence of the rail- 
road, is the increased acquaintance it has given 
the American people with the boundless resources 
of their own soil. If this invention has reduced 
England to a third of its size, by bringing people 
so much nearer, in this country it has given a 
new celerity to tune^ or anticipated by fifty 
years the planting of tracts of land, the choice 
of water privileges, the working of mines, and 
other natural advantages. Railroad iron is a 
magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleep- 
ing energies of land and water. 

The railroad is but one arrow in our quiver, 
though it has great value as a sort of yard-stick, 



THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 353 

and surveyor's line. The bountiful continent is 
ours, state on state, and territory on territory, to 
the waves of the Pacific sea ; 

" Our garden Is tlic immeasurable earth, 
The heaven's blue pillars are Medea's house." 

The task of surveying, planting, and building 
upon this immense tract, requires an education 
and a sentiment commensurate thereto. A con- 
sciousness of this fact, is beginning to take the 
place of the purely trading spirit and education 
which sprang up whilst all the population lived 
on the fringe of sea-coast. And even on the 
coast, prudent men have begun to see that every 
American should be educated with a view to the 
values of land. The arts of engineering and of 
architecture are studied; scientific agriculture is 
an object of growing attention ; the mineral 
riches are explored ; limestone, coal, slate, and 
iron ; and the value of timber-lands is enhanced. 
Columbus alleged as a reason for seeking a 
continent in the West, that tlie harmony of na- 
ture required a great tract of land in the western 
hemisphere, to balance the known extent of 
land in the eastern ; and it now appears that w^e 
must estimate the native values of this broad 
region to redress the balance of our own judg- 
ments, and appreciate the advantages opened to 
30* 



354 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

the human race in this country, which is our 
fortunate home. The land is the appointed 
remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in 
our culture. The continent we inhabit is to be 
physic and food for our mind, as well as our 
body. The land, with its tranquilizing, sanative 
influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic 
and traditional education, and bring us into just 
relations with men and things. 

The habit of living in the presence of these 
invitations of natural wealth is not inoperative ; 
and this habit, combined with the moral senti- 
ment which, in the recent years, has interrogated 
every institution, usage, and law, has naturally 
given a strong direction to the wishes and aims 
of active young men to withdraw &om cities, 
and cultivate the soil. This inclination has 
appeared in the most unlocked for quarters, in 
men supposed to be absorbed in business, and 
in those connected with the liberal profess'ons. 
And, since the walks of trade were crowded, 
whilst that of agriculture cannot easUy be, inas- 
much as the farmer who is not wanted by others 
can yet grow his own bread, whilst the manu- 
facturer or the trader, who is not wanted, can- 
not, — this seemed a happy tendency. For, 
beside all the moral benefit which we may ex- 
pect from the farmer's profession, when a man 



THE TOUNG AMERICAN. 355 

enters it considerately, this promised the con- 
quering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the 
adorning of the country with every advantage 
and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affec- 
don for a man's home, could suggest. 

Meantime, with cheap land, and the pacific 
disposition of the people, every thing invites 
CO the arts of agriculture, of gardening, and 
domestic architecture. Public gardens, on the 
6cale of such plantations in Europe and Asia, 
are now unknown to us. There is no feature 
of the old countries that strikes an American 
with more agreeable surprise than the beautiful 
gardens of Europe ; such as the Boboli in Flor- 
ence, the Villa Borghese in Rome, the Villa 
d'Este in Tivoli, the gardens at Munich, and at 
Frankfort on the Main : works easily imitated 
here, and which might well make the land dear 
to the citizen, and inflame patriotism. It is the 
fine art which is left for us, now that sculpture, 
painting, and religious and civil architecture 
have become effete, and have passed into second 
childhood. We have twenty degrees of lati- 
tude wherein to choose a seat, and the new 
modes of travelling enlarge the opportunity of 
selection, by making it easy to cultivate very 
distant tracts, and yet remain in strict intercourse 
ivith the centres of trade and population. And 



856 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

the whole force of all the arts goes to facilitate 
the decoration of lands and dwellings. A gar- 
den has this advantage, that it makes it indiffer- 
ent where you live. A well-laid garden makes 
the face of the country of no account ; let that 
be low or high, grand or mean, you have made 
a beautiful abode worthy of man, K the land- 
scape is pleasing, the garden shows it, — if tame, 
it excludes it. A little grove, which any farmer 
can find, or cause to grow near his house, will, 
in a few years, make cataracts and chains of 
mountains quite unnecessary to his scenery ; and 
he is so contented with his alleys, woodlands, 
orchards and river, that Niagara, and the Notch 
of the White Hills, and Nantasket Beach, are 
superfluities. And yet the selection of a fit 
houselot has the same advantage over an indif- 
ferent one, as the selection to a given employ- 
ment of a man who has a genius for that 
work. In the last case, the culture of years 
will never make the most painstaking appren- 
tice his equal : no more will gardening give 
the advantage of a happy site to a house 
in a hole or on a pinnacle. In America, we 
have hitherto little to boast in this kind. The 
cities drain the country of the best part of its 
population: the flower of the youth, of both 
sexes, goes into the towns, and the country ia 



THE YOUNG AMEEICAN. 357 

cultivated by a so much inferior class. The 
land, — travel a whole day together, — looks 
poverty-stricken, and the buildings plain and 
poor. In Europe, where society has an aristo- 
cratic structure, the land is full of men of the 
best stock, and the best culture, whose interest 
and pride it is to remain half the year on their 
estates, and to fill them with every convenience 
and ornament. Of course, these make model 
farms, and naodel architecture, and are a constant 
education to the eye of the surrounding popula- 
tion. Whatever events in progress shall go to 
disgust men with cities, and infuse into them 
the passion for country life, and country pleas- 
ures, will render a service to the whole face of 
this continent, and will further the most poetic 
of all the occupations of real life, the bringing 
out by art the native but hidden graces of the 
landscape. 

I look on such improvements, also, as directly 
tending to endear the land to the inhabitant. 
Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling 
it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, gener- 
ates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps 
shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a 
Bupport to his desk and ledger, or to his man- 
ufactory, values it less. The vast majority of 
the people of this country live by the land, 



358 THE YOUNG AMERICAIT. 

and cany its quality in their manners and opin- 
ions. We in the Atlantic states, by position, 
have been commercial, and have, as I said, im- 
bibed easily an European cultm^e. Luckily for 
us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to 
a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a 
new and continental element into the national 
mind, and we shall yet have an American 
genius. How much better when the whole 
land is a garden, and the people have grown up 
in the bowers of a paradise. Without looking, 
then, to those extraordinary social influences 
which are now acting in precisely this direction, 
but only at what is inevitably doing around 
us, I think we must regard the land as a com- 
manding and increasing power on the citizen, 
the sanative and Americanizing influence, which 
promises to disclose new virtues for ages to 
come. 

2. In the second place, the uprise and culmi- 
nation of the new and anti-feudal power of Com- 
merce, is the political fact of most significance 
to the American at this hour. 

We cannot look on the freedom of this coun- 
try, in connexion with its youth, without a pre- 
sentiment that here shall laws and institutions 
exist on some scale of proportion to the majesty 
of nature. To men legislating for the area 



THE YOUNG AMEBICAN. 859 

betwixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows 
and the tropics, somewhat of the gravity of 
nature will infuse itself into the code. A 
heterogeneous population crowding on all ships 
from all corners of the world to the great gates 
of North America, namely, Boston, New York, 
and New Orleans, and thence proceeding inward 
to the prakie and the mountains, and quickly 
contributing their private thought to the public 
opinion, their toll to the treasury, and their vote 
to the election, it cannot be doubted that the 
legislation of this country should become more 
catholic and cosmopolitan than that of any other. 
It seems so easy for America to inspire and ex- 
press the most expansive and humane spirit; 
new-born, free, healthful, strong, the land of the 
laborer, of the democrat, of the philanthropist, 
of the believer, of the saint, she should speak 
for the human race. It is the couatry of the 
Future. From Washington, proverbially ' the 
city of magnificent distances,' through all its 
cities, states, and territories, it is a country of 
beginnings, of projects, of designs, of expec- 
tations. 

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly 
Destiny by which the human race is guided, — 
the race never dying, the individual never 
spared, — to results affecting masses and ages. 



360 THE YOUNG AMEEICAN. 

Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius oi 
Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not 
discovered in their calculated and voluntary ac- 
tivity, but in what befalls, with or without their 
design. Only what is inevitable interests us 
and it turns out that love and good are inevi- 
table, and in the course of things. That Genius 
has infased itself into nature. It indicates itself 
by a small excess of good, a small balance in 
brute facts always favorable to the side of rea- 
son. All the facts in any part of nature shall be 
tabulated, and the results shall indicate the same 
security and benefit ; so slight as to be hardly 
observable, and yet it is there. The sphere 
is flattened at the poles, and swelled at~ the 
equator ; a form flowing necessarily from the 
fluid state, yet the form, the mathematician 
assures us, required to prevent the protuberances 
of the continent, or even of lesser mountains 
cast up at any time by earthquakes, from con- 
tinually deranging the axis of the earth. The 
census of the population is found to keep an in- 
variable equality in the sexes, with a trifling 
predominance in favor of the male, as if to 
counterbalance the necessarily increased expo- 
sure of male life in war, navigation, and other 
accidents. Remark the unceasing eflbrt through- 
out nature at somewhat better than the actual 



THE YOUNG AMEPJCAN. 361 

creatures: amelioration in nature^ which alone 
permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. 
The population of the world is a conditional 
population ; these are not the best, but tiie best 
that could live in the existing state of soils, 
gases, animals, and morals: the best Ihat could 
yet live ; there shall be a better, please God. 
This Genius, or Destiny, is of the sternest ad- 
ministration, though rumors exist of its secret 
tenderness. It may be styled a cruel kindness, 
serving the whole even to the ruin of the mem- 
ber ; a terrible communist, reserving all profits to 
the community, without dividend to individuals. 
Its law is, you shall have everything as a mem- 
ber, nothing to yourself. For Nature is the 
noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, 
working up all that is wasted to-day into to- 
moiTo'w's creation ; — not a superfluous grain of 
sand, for all the ostentation she makes of ex- 
pense and public works. It is because Nature 
thus saves and uses, laboring for the general, 
that we poor particulars are so crushed and 
straitened, and find it so hard to live. She flung 
us out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair, 
or a paring of a nail, but instantly she snatches 
at the shrecl, and appropriates it to the general 
stock. Our condition is like that of the poor 
wolves : if one of the flock wound himself, or 
31 



362 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

BO much as limp, the rest eat him up inconti^ 
nently. 

That serene Power interposes the check upon 
the caprices and ofFiciousness of our wills. Its 
charity is not our charity. One of its agents 
is our will, but that which expresses itself 
m our will, is stronger than our will. We 
are very forward to help it, but it will nut be 
accelerated. It resists our meddling, eleemosy- 
nary contrivances. We devise sumptuary and 
relief laws, but the principle of population is 
always reducing wages to the low^est pittance 
on which human life can be sustained. We leg- 
islate against forestalling and monopoly ; we 
would have a common granary for the poor; 
but the selfishness which hoards the corn for 
high prices, is the preventive of famine; and 
the law of self-preservatiorn is sm-er policy than 
any legislation c^n b^. We concoct eleemosy- 
nary systems, and it turns out that our char- 
ity increases pauperism. We inflate our paper 
currency, we repair comnverce with unlimited 
credit, and are presently visited with unlimited 
banla'uptcy. 

It is easy to see that the existing generation 
are conspiring with a beneficence, which, in 
its working for coming generations, sacrifices 
the passing one, which infatuates the most self- 



THE YOUITG AMERICAN, 363 

ish men to act against their private interest for 
the public welfare. We build railroads, we know 
not for what or for whom; but one thing is 
certain, that we who build will receive the very 
smallest share of benefit. Benefit will accrue ; 
they are essential to the country, but that will 
be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. 
We do the like in all matters : — 

" Man's heart the Almighty to the Future set 
By secret and inviolable springs/* 

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we re- 
deem the waste, w^e make prospective laws, 
we found colleges and hospitals, for remote 
generations. We should be mortified to learn 
that the little benefit wq chanced in our own 
persons to receive was the utmost they would 
yield. 

The history of commerce, is the record of this 
beneficent tendency. The patriarchal form of 
government readily becomes despotic, as each 
person may see in his own family. Fathers 
wish to be fathers of the minds of their chil- 
dren, and behold with impatience a new char- 
acter and way of thinking presuming to show 
itself in their own son or daughter. This feel- 
ing, which all their love and pride in the pow- 
ers of their children cannot subdue, becomes 



864 THE YOUITG AMERICAIT. 

petulance and tyranny when the head of the 
clan, the emperor of an empke, deals with the 
same difference of opinion in his subjects. Dif- 
ference of opinion is the one crime which kings 
never forgive. An empire is an immense ego- 
tism. " I am the State," said the French Louis. 
When a French ambassador mentioned to Paul 
of Russia, that a man of consequence in St. 
Petersburg was interesting himself in some 
matter, the Czar interrupted him, — " There is 
no man of consequence in this empire, but he 
with whom I am actually speaking ; and so long 
only as I am speaking to him, is he of any 
consequence." And the Emperor Nicholas 
is reported to have said to his council, " The age 
is embarrassed with new opinions ; rely on me, 
gentlemen, I shall oppose an iron will to the 
progress of liberal opinions." 

It is easy to see that this patriarchal or family 
management gets to be rather troublesome to all 
but the papa ; the sceptre comes to be a crow- 
bar. And this unpleasant egotism, Feudalism 
opposes, and finally destroys. The king is 
compelled to call in the aid of his brothers 
and cousins, and remote relations, to help him 
keep his overgrown house in order; and this 
club of noblemen always come at last to have 
a wiL of their own ; they combine to brave 



THE YOmSTG AMERICAJT. 365 

the sovereign, and call in the aid of the peo- 
ple. Each chief attaches as many followers 
as he can, by kindness, maintenance, and gifts ; 
and as long as war lasts, the nobles, who 
must be soldiers, rule very well. But when 
peace comes, the nobles prove, very whimsical 
and uncomfortable masters ; their frolics turn 
out to be insulting and degrading to the com- 
moner. Feudalism grew to be a bandit and 
brigand. 

Meantime Trade had begun to appear : Trade, 
a plant which grows wherever there is peace, 
as soon as there is peace, and as long as there 
is peace. The luxury and necessity of the noble 
fostered it. And as quickly as men go to foreign 
parts, in ships or caravans, a new order of things 
springs up; new command takes place, new ser- 
vants and new masters. Their information, their 
wealth, their correspondence, have made them 
quite other men than left their native shore. 
They are nobles now, and by another patent 
than the king's. Feudalism had been good, had 
broken the power of the kings, and had some 
good traits of its own ; but it had grown mis- 
chievous, it was time for it to die, and, as they 
say of dying people, all its faults came out. 
Trade was the strong man that broke it down 
and raised a new and unknown power in its 
31* 



3G6 THE Yoxmo a:meeican, 

place. It is a new agent in the world, and one 
of great function ; it is a very intellectual force. 
This displaces physical strength, and instals 
computation, combination, information, science, 
in its room. It calls out all force of a certain 
kind that slumbered in the former dynasties. It 
is now in the midst of its career. Feudalism is 
not ended yet. Our governments still partake 
largely of that element. Trade goes to make 
the governments insignificant, and to bring every 
kind of faculty of every individual that can in 
any manner serve any person, 0)1 sale. Instead 
of a huge Army and Navy, and Executive De- 
partments, it converts Government into an Intel- 
ligence-Office, where every man may find what 
he wishes to buy, and expose what he has to 
sell, not only produce and manufactures, but art, 
skill, and intellectual and moral values. This is 
the good and this the evil of trade, that it would 
put everything into market, talent, beauty, virtue, 
and man himself. 

The philosopher and lover of man have 
much harm to sav of trade ; but the histo- 
rian vrill see that trade was the prhiciple of 
Liberty ; that trade planted America and de- 
stroyed Feudalism ; that it makes peace and 
keeps peace, and it will abolish slavery. Wg 
complain of its oppression of the poorj, and 



THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 367 

of its building up a new aristocracy on the 
ruins of the aristocracy it destroyed. But the 
aristocracy of trade has no permanence, is not 
entailed, wa.s the result oftoil and talent, the 
result of merit of some kind, and is continu- 
ally falling, like the waves of the sea, before 
new claims of the same sort. Trade is an in- 
strument in the hands of that friendly Power 
which works for us in our own despite. We 
design it thus and thus ; it turns out other- 
wise and far better. This beneficent tendency 
omnipotent without violence, exists and works. 
Every line of history inspires a confidence 
that we shall not go far wrong ; that things 
mend. That is the moral of all we learn, that 
it warrants Hope, the prolific mother of reforms. 
Our part is plainly not to throw ourselves across 
the track, to block improvement, and sit till 
we are stone, but to watch the uprise of succes- 
sive mornings, and to conspire with the new 
works of new days. Government has been a 
fossil ; it should be a plant. I conceive that the 
office of statute law should be to express, and 
not to impede the mind of mankind. New 
thoughts, new things. Trade was one instru- 
ment, but Trade is also but for a time, and must 
give way to somewhat broader and better, whose 
signs are already dawning in the sky. 



S68 THE YOUNG AMEPJCAN. 

3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which 
is the sequel of trade. 

Ill consequence of the revolution in the state 
of society wrought by trade, Government in 
our times is beginning to v\"ear a clumsy and 
cumbrous appearance. We have already seen 
our way to shorter methods. The time is full 
of good signs. Some of them shall ripen to 
fruit. All this beneficent socialism is a friendly 
omen, and the swelling cry of voices for the edu- 
cation of the people, indicates that Government 
has other offices than those of banker and execu- 
tioner. Witness the new movements in the 
civilized world, the Communism of France, Ger- 
many, and Switzerland ; the Trades' Unions : 
the English League against the Corn Laws ; and 
the whole Industrial Statistics^ so called. In 
Paris, the blouse, the badge of the operative, 
has begun to make its appearance in the saloons. 
Witness, too, the spectacle of three Communities 
which have within a very short time sprung 
up within this Commonwealth, besides several 
others undertaken by citizens of Massachusetts 
within the territory of other States. These pro- 
ceeded from a variety of motives, from an impa- 
tience of many usages in common life, from a 
■wish for greater freedom than the manners and 



THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 869 

opinions of society permitted, but in great part 
from a feeling that the true offices of the State, 
the State had let fall to the ground ; that in the 
scramble of parties for the public purse, the main 
duties of government were omitted, — the duty 
to instruct the ignorant, to supply the poor with 
work and with good guidance. These com- 
munists preferred the agricultural life as the 
most favorable condition for human culture ; but 
they thought that the farm, as we manage it, 
did not satisfy the right ambition of man. The 
farmer, after sacrificing pleasm-e, taste, freedom, 
thought, love, to his work, turns out often a 
bankrupt, like the merchant. This result might 
well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from 
cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to 
end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and 
removing from bad to worse. It is time to have 
the thing looked into, and with a sifting criti- 
cism ascertained who is the fool. It seemed a 
great deal worse, because the farmer is living in 
the same town with men who pretend to know 
exactly what he wants. On one side, is agricul- 
tural chemistry, coolly exposing the nonsense of 
our spendthrift agriculture and ruinous expense 
of manures, and offering, by means of a tea- 
Bpoonful of artificial guano, to turn a sandbank 



870 THE YOJmG AMERICAIT. 

into corn ; and, on the other, the farmer, not 
only eager for the information, but with bad 
crops and in debt and bankruptcy, for want of 
it. Here are Etzlers and mechanical projectors, 
who, with the Fourierists, undoubtingly affirm 
that the smallest union would make every man 
rich ; — and, on the other side, a multitude of 
poor men and women seeking work, and who 
cannot find enough to pay then- board. The 
science is confident, and surely the poverty is 
real. K any means could be found to bring 
these two together ! 

This was one design of the projectors of the 
Associations which are now making their first 
feeble experiments. - They were founded in love, 
and in labor. They proposed, as you know", 
that all men should take a part in the manual 
toil, and proposed to amend the condition of 
men, by substituting harmonious for hostile in- 
dustry. It was a noble thought of Fourier, 
which gives a favorable idea of his system, to 
distinguish in his Phalanx a class as the Sacred 
Band, by whom whatever duties were disagree- 
able, and likely to be omitted, were to be as- 
sumed. 

At least, an economical success seemed certain 
for the enterprise, and that agricultural associa- 
tion must, sooner or later, fix the price of bread; 



TUE YOUNG AMERICAN. 371 

and drive single farmers into association, in self- 
defence ; as the great commercial and manufac- 
turing companies had already done. The Com- 
munity is only the continuation of the same 
movement which made the joint-stock compa- 
nies for manufactures, mining, insurance, bank- 
ing, and so forth. It has turned out cheaper to 
make calico by con^panies ; and it is proposed 
to plant corn, and to bake bread by com- 
panies 

Undoubtedly, abundant mistakes will be made 
by these first adventurers, which will draw ridi- 
cule on their schemes. I think, for example, 
that they exaggerate the importance of a favor- 
ite project of theirs, that of paying talent and 
labor at one rate, paying all sorts of service at 
one rate, say ten cents the hour. They have 
paid it so ; but not an instant would a dime 
remain a dime. In one hand it became an 
eagle as it fell, and in another hand a copper 
cent. For the whole value of the dime is in 
knowing what to do with it. One man buys 
with it a land-title of an Indian, and makes his 
posterity princes ; or buys corn enough to feed 
the world ; or pen, ink, and paper, or a painter's 
brush, by which he can communicate himself 
to the human race as if he were fire ; and the 
other buys barley candy. Money is of no value 



372 THE YOUNG AMEKICAN. 

it cannot spend itself. All depends on the skill 
of the spender. Whether, too, the objection al- 
most universally felt by such women in the com- 
munity as were mothers, to an associate life, to a 
common table, and a common nursery, &c., set- 
ting a higher value on the private family with 
poverty, than on an association with wealth, wih 
not prove insuperable, remains to be determined 

But the Communities aimed at a higher suc- 
cess in securing to all their members an equa* 
and thorough education. And on the whole 
one may say, that aims so generous, and so 
forced on them by the times, will not be relin 
quished, even if these attempts fail, but will b« 
prosecuted until they succeed. 

This is the value of the Communities ; not 
what they have done, but the revolution which 
they indicate as on the way. Yes, Government 
must educate the poor man. Look across the 
country from any hill-side around us, and the 
landscape seems to crave Government. The 
actual differences of men must be acknowledged, 
and met with love and wisdom. These risinp 

V.' 

grounds which command the champaign below, 
seem to ask for lords, true lords, land-lords, who 
understand the land and its uses, and the appli 
cabilities of men, and whose government would 
be what it should, namely, mediation between 



THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 873 

nvant and supply. How gladly would each citi- 
zen pay a commission for the support and con- 
tinuation of good guidance. None should be a 
governor who has not a talent for governing. 
Now many people have a native skill for carv- 
ing out business for many hands ; a genius for 
the disposition of affairs ; and are never hap- 
pier than when difficult practical questions, 
which embarrass other men, are to be solved. 
All lies in light before them ; they are in their 
element. Could any means be contrived to ap- 
point only these ! There really seems a progress 
towards such a state of things, in which this 
work shall be done by these natural workmen ; 
and this, not certainly through any increased 
discretion shown by the citizens at elections, 
but by the gradual contempt into which official 
government falls, and the increasing disposition 
of private adventurers to assume its fallen func- 
tions. Thus the national Post Office is likely 
to go into disuse before the private telegraph 
and the express companies. The currency 
threatens to fall entirely into private hands. 
Justice is continually administered more and 
more by private reference, and not by htigation 
We have feudal governments in a commerciaJ 
age. It would be but an easy extension of out 
commercial system, to pay a private empero? 

32 



374 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

a fee for services, as we pay an architect, 
an engineer, or a lawyer. K any man has a 
talent for righting wrong, for administering diffi- 
cult affairs, for couns^elling poor farmers how to 
turn their estates to good husbandry, for com- 
bining a hundred private enterprises to a general 
benefit, let him in the county-town, or in Court- 
street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Gov- 
€rno7'j Mr. Johnson, Working' king-. 

How can our young men complain of the pov- 
erty of things in New England, and not feel that 
poverty as a demand on their charity to make 
New England rich ? Where is he who seeing a 
thousand men useless and unhappy, and mak- 
ing the whole region forlorn by their inaction, 
and conscious himself of possessing the faculty 
they want, does not hear his call to go and be 
their king ? 

We must have kings, and we must have no- 
bles. Nature provides such in every society, — 
only let us have the real instead of the titular. 
Let us have our leading and our inspiration from 
the best. In every society some men arc born 
to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be 
well directed, directed by love, and they would 
everywhere be greeted with joy and honor. The 
chief is the chief all the world over, only not 
nis cap and his plume. It is only their dis* 



THE YOUNG AMEEICAN. 375 

like of the pretender, which makes men some- 
times unj-ust to the accomplished man. If so- 
ciety were transparent, the noble would every- 
where be gladly received and accredited, and 
would not be asked for his day's work, but would 
be felt as benefit, inasmuch as he was noble. 
That were his duty and' stint, — to keep himself 
pure and purifying, the leaven of his nation. I 
think I see place and duties for a nobleman in 
every society ; but it is not to drink wine and 
ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life 
for the multitude by forethought, by elegant 
studies, by perseverance, self-devotion, and the 
remembrance of the humble old friend, by mak- 
ing his life secretly beautiful. 

I call upon you, young men, to obey your 
heart, and be the nobility of this land. In every 
age of the world, there has been a leading na- 
tion, one of a more generous sentiment, whose 
eminent citizens were willing to stand for the 
interests of general justice and humanity, at the 
risk of being called, by the men of the moment, 
chimerical and fantastic. Which should be that 
nation but these States ? Which should lead 
that movement, if not New England? Who 
should lead the leaders, but the Young Ameri- 
can ? The people, and the world, are now suffer- 
ing from the want of religion and honor in its 



876 THE YOUNG AMERICAIT. 

public mind. In America, out of doors all seems 
a market ; in doors, an air-tight stove of con- 
ventionalism. Every body who comes into our 
houses savors of these habits ; the men, of the 
market; the women, of the custom. I find no 
expression in our state papers or legislative de- 
bate, in our lyceuras or churches, especially in 
our newspapers, of a high national feeling, no 
lofty counsels, that rightfully stir the blood. I 
speak of those organs which can be presumed 
to speak a popular sense. They recommend 
conventional virtues, whatever will earn and 
preserve property ; always the capitalist ; the 
college, the church, the hospital, the theatre, the 
hotel, the road, the ship, of the capitalist, — 
whatever goes to secure, adorn, enlarge these, is 
good; what jeopardizes any of these, is damna- 
ble. The ' opposition ' papers, so called, are on 
the same side. They attack the great capitalist, 
but with the aim to make a capitalist of the poor 
man. The opposition is against those who have 
money, from those who wish to have money 
But who announces to us in journal, or in pul 
pit, or in the street, the secret of heroism, 

"Man alone 
Can perform the impossible ? " 

I shall not need to go into an enumeration oj 



THE YOUi^G AMERICAIT. 877 

our national defects and vices which require this 
Order of Censors in the state. I might not set 
down our most proclaimed offences as the worst 
It is not often the worst trait that occasions the 
loudsst outcry. Men complain of their suffering, 
and not of the crime. I fear little from the bad 
effect of Repudiation ; I do not fear that it will 
spread. Stealing is a suicidal business ; you can- 
not repudiate but once. But the bold face and 
tardy repentance permitted to this local mischief, 
reveal a public mind so preoccupied with the 
love of gain, that the common sentiment of in- 
di.<?nation at fraud does not act with its natural 
force. The more need of a withdrawal from the 
crowd, and a resort to the fountain of right, by 
the brave. The timidity of our public opinion, 
is our disease, or, shall I say, the publicness of 
opinion, the absence of private opinion. Good- 
nature is plentiful, hni:, we want justice, with 
heart of steel, to fight down the proud. The 
private mind has the access to the totality of 
goodness and truth, that it may be a balance to 
a corrupt society ; and to stand for the private 
verdict against popular clamor, is the office of 
the noble. If a humane measure is propounded 
in behaxf of the slave, or of the Irishman, or the 
Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that sen 
timent, that project, will have the homage of the 
32* 



378 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

hero. That is his nobility, his oath of knight- 
hood, to succor the helpless and oppressed; 
always to throw himself on the side of weak- 
ness, of youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the 
expa'Hsive side, never on the defensive, the con- 
serving, the timorous, the lock and bolt system. 
More than our good-will we may not be able to 
give. We have our own affairs, our own genius, 
which chains each to his proper work. We can- 
not give our life to the cause of the debtor, of 
the slave, or the pauper, as another is doing ; but 
to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the 
sentiment and the work of that man, not to 
throw stumbling-blocks in the way of the abo- 
litionist, the philanthropist, as the organs of in- 
fluence and opinion are swift to do. It is for U9 
to confide in the beneficent Supreme Power, 
and not to rely on our money, and on the state 
because it is the guard of money. At this mo- 
ment, the terror of old people and of vicious 
people, is lest the Union of these States be de- 
stroyed: as if the Union had any other real 
basis than the good pleasure of a majority of the 
citizens to be united. But the wise and just 
man will always feel that he stands on his own 
feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not 
receives security from it ; and that if all went 
down, he and such as he would quite easily 



THE YOUNG AMERICAIT. 379 

combine in a new and better constitution. Every 
great and memorable community has consisted 
of formidable individuals, who, like the Roman 
or the Spartan, lent his own spirit to the state 
and made it great. Yet only by the supernat- 
ural is a man strong ; nothing is so weak as an 
egotist. Nothing is mightier than we, when we 
are vehicles of a truth before which the state 
and the individual are alike ephemeral. 

Gentlemen, the development of our American 
internal resources, the extension to the utmost 
of the commercial system, and the appearance of 
new moral causes which are to modify the state, 
are giving an aspect of greatness to the Future, 
which the imagination fears to open. One thing 
is plain for all men of common sense and com- 
mon conscience, that here, here in America, is 
the home of man. After all the deductions 
which are to be made for our pitiful politics, 
which stake every gravest national question 
on the silly die, whether James or whether 
Robert shall sit in the chair and hold the 
purse ; after all the deduction is made for our 
frivolities and insanities, there still remains an 
organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it 
loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which 
offers opportunity to the human mind not known 
ia any other region. 



380 THE YOUNG AMERIOAN". 

It is true, the public mind wants self-respect 
We are full of vanity, of which the most ssignai 
proof is our sensitiveness to foreign and espec- 
ially English censure. One cause of this is oui 
immense reading, and that reading chiefly con- 
fined to the productions of the English press. 
It is also true, that, to imaginative persons in 
this country, there is somewhat bare and bald 
in our short history, and unsettled wilderness. 
They ask, who would live in a new country, 
that can live in an old ? and it is not stran£:e 
that our youths and maidens should bm-n to 
see the picturesque extremes of an antiquated 
country. But it is one thing to visit the pyra- 
mids, and another to wish to live there. Would 
they like tithes to the clergy, and sevenths to 
the government, and horse-guards, and licensed 
press, and grief when a child is born, and threat- 
ening^ starved weavers, and a pauperism now 
constituting one-thirteenth of the population ? 
Instead of the open future expanding here be- 
fore the eye of every boy to vastness, would 
they like the closing in of the future to a nar- 
row slit of sky, and that fast contracting to be 
no future ? One thing, for instance, the beauties 
of aristocracy, we commend to the study of the 
travelling American. The English, the most 
conservative people this side of India, are not 



THE YOUNG AMEHICAN. 381 

sensible of the restraint, but an American would 
seriously resent it. The aristocracy, incorpo- 
rated by law and education, degrades life for 
the unprivileged classes. It is a questionable 
compensation to the embittered feeling of a 
proud commoner, the reflection that a fop, who, 
by the magic of title, paralyzes his arm, and 
plucks from him half the graces and rights 
of a man, is himself also an aspirant excluded 
with the same ruthlessness from higher circles, 
since there is no end to the wheels within 
wheels of this spiral heaven. Something may 
be pardoned to the spirit of loyalty when it be- 
comes fantastic ; and something to the imagina- 
tion, for the baldest life is symbolic. Philip 11. 
of Spain rated liis ambassador for neglecting 
serious affairs in Italy, whilst he debated some 
point of honor with the French ambassador; 
*' You have left a business of importance for a 
ceremony." The ambassador replied, " Your 
majesty's self is but a ceremony." In the East, 
where the religious sentiment comes in to the 
support of the aristocracy, and in the Romish 
church also, there is a grain of sweetness in the 
Tyranny ; but in England, the fact seems to me 
intolerable, what is commonly affirmed, that such 
is the transcendent honor accorded to wealth and 
birth, that no man of letters, be his eminence what 



382 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. 

it may, is received into the best society, except aa 
a lion and a show. The English have many vir- 
tues, many advantages, and the proudest history 
of the world ; but they need all, and more than 
all the resources of the past to indemnify a heroic 
gentleman in that country for the mortifications 
prepared for him by the system of society, and 
which seem to impose the alternative to resist or 
to avoid it. That there are mitigations and prac- 
tical alleviations to this rigor, is not an excuse 
for the rule. Commanding worth, and personal 
power, must sit crowned in all companies, nor 
will extraordinary persons be slighted or af- 
fronted in any company of civilized men. But 
the system is an invasion of the sentiment of 
justice and the native rights of men, which, 
however decorated, must lessen the value of 
English citizenship. It is for Englishmen to 
consider, not for us ; we only say, let u.s live in 
America, too thankful for our want of feudal in- 
stitutions. Our houses and towns are like mo.^ses 
and lichens, so slight and new ; but youth is a 
fault of which we shall daily mend. This Jand, 
too, is as old as the Flood, and wants no orna- 
ment or privilege which nature could bestow. 
Here stars, here woods, here hills, here animals, 
here men abound, and the vast tendencies con- 
cur of a new order. If only the men are em- 



THE YOUITG AMERICAN. 383 

ployed in conspiring with the designs of the 
Spirit who led us hither, and is leading us still, 
we shall quickly enough advance out of all hear- 
ing of others' censures, out of all regrets of our 
own, into a new and more excellent social state 
than history has recorded. 



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